with "The Household of Sir Thomas More" in the person of his noble
daughter Margaret. There was a good deal more genuine material here, and
she has woven in the fragments from Erasmus and others with great
ingenuity, and imitated the style of the fifteenth century as well as
she had done that of the seventeenth.
From that time Anne Manning's books had a ready sale, though still her
name did not appear. "Cherry and Violet" was a tale of the plague of
London; "Edward Osborne" told of the apprentice who leapt from the
window of a house on London Bridge to save his master's daughter from
drowning; "The Old Chelsea Bunhouse" described the haunts with which
Miss Manning was familiar; and there were other stories of country life,
such as the "Ladies of Bever Hollow." All were written in the purest
style, such as could only be attained by one to whom slip-shod writing
was impossible, and to whom it was equally impossible not to write what
was gentle, charitable, and full of religious principle.
Miss Manning was a kind friend and charming letter-writer. Her health
began to fail in 1854, when she was writing for a magazine "Some
Passages in the Life of an Authoress," never completed. She continued to
be an invalid under the care of her sisters till her death on the 14th
of September, 1879.
[Signature: C M Yonge]
DINAH MULOCK (MRS. CRAIK)
_By_ MRS. PARR
DINAH MULOCK (MRS. CRAIK)
In the small circle of women writers who shed literary lustre on the
early years of her present Majesty's reign was Dinah Mulock, best known
to the present novel-reading generation as the author of "John Halifax,
Gentleman."
To appreciate fully the position that we claim for her, it will be
necessary to turn back to the period when she began to write, and see
who were her contemporaries.
Pre-eminent among these stand out three names--names immortal on the
roll of fame for so long as taste and critical judgment last; the books
of Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot must be
regarded as masterpieces of fiction. We, their humble followers, bow
before their genius which time, fashion, or progress cannot dim or take
from; therefore, to have achieved success and to have made an abiding
fame while such luminaries were shining in the firmament was a
distinction to be justly proud of--the result of talent, delicacy of
handling, and grasp of character that were only a little below genius.
How vast the difference that one small step would have made it is not
our purpose to show; our intention is rather to take a general view of
the work of a writer who--now that close upon half a century has passed,
since, in 1849, timidly and without giving her name, she launched on the
world her first novel, "The Ogilvies"--has never lost her hold upon the
reading public of Great Britain, the Colonies, America, or wherever the
English tongue is spoken.
* * * * *
Dinah Mulock was born in 1826 at Stoke-upon-Trent in Staffordshire. Her
disposition towards literature seems to have been inherited from her
father, who was connected--but in no very prosperous way--with letters,
and was known to Byron and to the poet Moore, whose fellow countryman he
was. At the time of his daughter's birth, he was acting as spiritual
minister to a small congregation who were followers of what were then
generally thought to be his advanced and unorthodox opinions. Few who
forsake the established road for their own peculiar rut find that
prosperity bears them company, and the fortunes of the Mulock family
during the embryo authoress's early years were unsettled and
unsatisfactory. We are all given to rebel against the clouds which
overcast our youth, seldom realising that to this pinch of adverse
circumstance we owe much of that power to depict the sorrows, joys, and
perplexities of life in the setting forth of which Miss Mulock became so
eminently successful.
Before she had reached the age of twenty, she left her home and came to
London, "feeling conscious," we are told, "of a vocation for
authorship."
Now, in the present day, when novel writing has become an employment,
profession, distraction, I might almost say a curse, there would be
nothing remarkable in such a conviction; but in 1846 the mania of
desiring to see their names in print had not seized upon our sex;
therefore the divine afflatus must have been very strong which sent a
timid attractive girl, hampered by all the prejudices of her day, to try
the fortunes of her pen in London.
That she had not been deceived in her quality is shown by the success of
"The Ogilvies," which not only was popular with novel readers, but
raised hopes that the writer possessed great dramatic power, to be more
ably used when experience had corrected the crude faults of a first
book. The story, based on passionate first love, is written with the
enthusiasm and vigour which comes pleasantly from a young hand, and
makes us disposed to view leniently the superabundance of sentiment
which, under other circumstances, we should censure. The death of the
boy, Leigh Pennythorne, is rendered with a pathos which calls for
admiration, and we are not surprised to see it ranked with the death of
little Paul Dombey; while that of Katherine Lynedon, spoken of at the
time as possessing great dramatic force, strikes us now as melodramatic
and sensational.
* * * * *
Encouraged by having found favour with the public, Miss Mulock followed
up her success with "Olive" (1850), "Agatha's Husband" (1852), "Head of
the Family" (1854). Her literary reputation was now established; and,
though her _magnum opus_, "John Halifax," had yet to be written, it may
be as well to consider some of the merits and weaknesses of her style,
her treatment of her subjects, and her delineation of character.
In a short sketch, such as this, it is not possible to give a synopsis
of the plots of the various books, or even, in most cases, extracts from
them. We have to confine ourselves to the endeavour to realise the
effect they produced at the time they were written--the estimation they
were then held in, and to see what position they now command among the
novels of the present day.
Perhaps it will be only fair towards the faults we are about to find
that we should recall the forward strides made by women in the past
forty years. We who can recall the faulty teaching and the many
prejudices of that date must often question if women now are
sufficiently sensible of the advantages they possess.
A reviewer of Miss Mulock's novels, writing in 1866, says: "It is one of
the chief misfortunes of almost every female novelist that her own
education, as a woman, has been wretchedly defective;" and further on he
adds: "the _education_ of the majority of women leaves them not only
without information, but without intelligent interest in any subject
that does not immediately concern them." He then points out that it
seems impossible for women to describe a man as he is--that they see him
only from the outside. "They are ignorant of the machinery which sets
the thing going, and the principle of the machinery; and so they
discreetly tell you what kind of case it has, but nothing more."
Now, when the time has come that young men and maidens have other
interests in common than those which spring out of flirtation and
love-making, we may feel quite sure that each sex will get a better
insight and have a juster knowledge of the other. The general taste for
exercise, and the development of activity and health of body, has
killed sentimentality and the heroines of the Rosa Matilda school. Not
that these were the heroines that Miss Mulock created. Her ideals are to
a certain extent made of flesh and blood, although they are not always
living figures. Even at the period when we are told that "In the world
of letters few authors have so distinct and at the same time so eminent
a position as this lady," her judicious admirers find fault with her
overflow of feminine sentimentality, which never permitted her ideal
sufferers to conquer their griefs so far that they could take a
practical and healthy interest in the affairs of the living world. "They
live only 'for others'" says one critic, "'the beautiful light' is
always in their faces; their hands 'work spasmodically' at least once in
every two or three chapters."
Regarding the cramping influence of the prejudices which hedged in women
in Miss Mulock's day, is it not very possible that this flaw in the
portraiture of her own sex may have been due to the narrowness of her
training rather than to any deficiency in her talent? Nothing more
plainly shows how warped her judgment had become than many of the
passages in "A Woman's Thoughts about Women." This is a book with much
sound argument in it, and full of the desire to rectify the feminine
grievances to which she was not blind. But when we come to a passage
like the following, in which she asserts that all who "preach up lovely
uselessness, fascinating frivolity, delicious helplessness, not only
insult womanhood but her Creator," we ask how is this to be reconciled
with the text which comes immediately after: "Equally blasphemous, and
perhaps even more harmful, is the outcry about the equality of the
sexes; the frantic attempt to force women, many of whom are either
ignorant of, or unequal for, their own duties, into the position and
duties of men. A pretty state of matters would ensue! Who that ever
listened for two hours to the verbose confused inanities of a ladies'
committee would immediately go and give his vote for a female House of
Commons? or who, on receipt of a lady's letter of business--I speak of
the average--would henceforth desire to have our courts of justice
stocked with matronly lawyers and our colleges thronged by 'sweet girl
graduates with their golden hair'? As for finance, if you pause to
consider the extreme difficulty there always is in balancing Mrs.
Smith's housekeeping book, or Miss Smith's quarterly allowance, I think,
my dear Paternal Smith, you need not be much afraid lest this loud
acclaim for women's rights should ever end in pushing you from your
counting house, college, or elsewhere."
On this showing, such crass ignorance is to be accepted in women, and
is to be taken as a matter of course and as natural to them as cutting
their teeth or having measles or chicken pox. It is of little use to
advocate "Self Dependence," "Female Professions," "Female Handicrafts,"
for those who cannot write a business letter or do a simple sum. Miss
Mulock may have had, indeed I fear had, much reason to cast these
reproaches at her sex. But that she did not feel their shame, and urge
her sister women to strive for an education more worthy of intelligent
beings, proves to me how deeply her mental gifts suffered from the
cramping influence of the time in which she lived. Could she have
enjoyed some of the advantages which spring out of the greater freedom
of thought and action permitted in the present day, how greatly it would
have enlarged her mental vision! Her male creations would have been cast
in a more vigorous man-like mould. Her feminine ideals would no longer
be incarnations of sentiment but living vital creatures. Where the mind
is stunted the mental insight must be limited; and strong as were Miss
Mulock's talents, they were never able to burst the bonds which for
generations had kept the greater number of women in intellectual
imprisonment.
* * * * *
In "Olive," the novel which immediately followed "The Ogilvies," Miss
Mulock ventured on a very fresh and interesting subject. Olive, the
heroine of the story, is a deformed girl, "a puir bit crippled lassie"
with a crooked spine. To make this centre-character attractive and
all-absorbing was a worthy effort on the part of an author, and we take
up the book and settle ourselves to see how it will be done.
Unfortunately, before long, the courage which conceived the personal
blemish gives way, and, succumbing to the difficulties of making mind
triumph over beauty, Miss Mulock commits the artistic error of trying to
impress upon you that, notwithstanding the pages of lamentations over
this deformity and the attack made on your sympathy, the disfigurement
was so slight that no person could possibly have noticed it. Naturally
this puts the heroine in a more commonplace position; and as several
minor plots are introduced which Olive only serves to string together,
much of the interest in her with which we started is frittered away.
Finally, Olive marries and restores the faith of a religious sceptic.
And here it is curious to read the objections raised at the time against
bringing into fiction "subjects most vital to the human soul." One
critic, after describing the hero he is willing to accept--and, much to
our regret, space prevents us showing this terrible model that we have
escaped--says: "But a hero whose intellectual crotchets, or delusions,
or blindness, are to be entrusted for repairs to a fascinating
heroine--a mental perplexity which is to be solved in fiction--a
deep-rooted scepticism which is to lose its _vis vitae_ according to the
artistic demands of a tale of the fancy, this we cannot away with.
Sceptics are not plastic and obliging. Would to Heaven scepticism
_could_ be cured by bright eyes, dulcet tones, and a novelist's art of
love!"
Criticisms in this tone make more plain to us the difficulties which
novelists in the fifties had to grapple with. So many subjects were
tabooed, so many natural impulses restrained, while the bogey Propriety
was flaunted to scare the most innocent actions, so that nothing short
of genius could ride safely over such narrow-minded bigotry. That an
extreme licence should follow before the happy mean could be arrived at,
was a safe prediction; but many of the writers in that day must have had
a hard task while trying to clip the wings of their soaring
imaginations, so that they might not rise above the level marked out by
Mrs. Grundy.
Now, all these social dogmas must have had an immense influence on the
receptive mind of Dinah Mulock, and readers must not lose sight of this
fact should they be inclined to call some of her books didactic, formal,
or old-fashioned. She never posed as a brilliant, impassioned writer of
stories which tell of wrongs, or crimes, or great mental conflicts. In
her novels there is no dissection of character, no probing into the
moral struggles of the human creature. Her teaching holds high the
standard of duty, patience, and the unquestioning belief that all that
God wills is well.
* * * * *
The enormous hold which, ever since its first appearance in 1857, "John
Halifax" has had on a great portion of the English-speaking public, is
due to the lofty elevation of its tone, its unsullied purity and
goodness, combined with a great freshness, which appeals to the young
and seems to put them and the book in touch with each other. Those who
read the story years ago still recollect the charm it had for them; and,
in a degree, the same fascination exists for youthful readers at the
present time. The theme is noble, setting forth the high moral truth of
"the nobility of man as man," and into its development the author threw
all her powers.
From the opening sentence, where you are at once introduced to the
ragged, muddy boy and the sickly helpless lad, you feel that these two
will prove to be the leading actors in the story--probably made
contrasts of, and perhaps played one against the other. This idea,
however, is speedily dispelled. Possibly from a dread of failing where
it is thought so many women do fail--in the portrayal of the unseen
sides of character and the infinite subtleties it gives rise to--Miss
Mulock, wisely we think, decided to place her story in the
autobiographic form; and the gentle refined invalid, Phineas Fletcher,
is made the _deus ex machina_ to unravel to the reader not only the
romance of his friend John Halifax's history, but also the working of
his noble chivalrous nature. Few situations are more pathetically drawn
than the attitude of these two lads, with its exchange of dependence and
hero-worship on the one side, and of tender, helpful compassion on the
other. A true David and Jonathan we see them, full of the trust,
confidence, and sincerity young unsullied natures are capable of. And
the story of the friendship, as it grows towards maturity, is equally
well told.
His energy and his indomitable faith in himself make a prosperous man of
the penniless boy. We follow him on from driving the skin cart to being
master of the tan-yard; and throughout all his temptations, struggles,
success, he maintains the same honest, fearless spirit.
It seems natural that when to such an exalted nature love comes it
should come encircled with romance, and the wooing of Ursula March, as
told by sensitive, affectionate Phineas Fletcher, is very prettily
described.
For the reason that Ursula is an heiress with a host of aristocratic
relations, John believes his love for her to be hopeless. He struggles
against this overwhelming passion for some time, until the continuous
strain throws him into a fever of which his friend fears he will die. In
this agonising strait Phineas is inspired with the idea of confessing
the truth to Ursula; and, after a touching scene in which this is most
delicately done, she determines to go to the man who is dying of love
for her. In the interview, which is too long to be given in its entirety
and too good to be curtailed, John tells her that owing to a great
sorrow that has come to him he must leave Norton Bury and go to America.
She begs to be told the reason, and without an actual avowal he lets her
see his secret.
"'John, stay!'
"It was but a low, faint cry, like that of a little bird. But he heard
it--felt it. In the silence of the dark she crept up to him, like a
young bird to its mate, and he took her into the shelter of his love for
evermore. At once all was made clear between them, for whatever the
world might say they were in the sight of heaven equal, and she received
as much as she gave."
When lights are brought into the room John takes Ursula's hand and leads
her to where old Abel Fletcher is sitting.
"His head was erect, his eyes shining, his whole aspect that of a man
who declares before all the world, 'This is my _own_." 'Eh?' said my
father, gazing at them from over his spectacles.
"John spoke brokenly, 'We have no parents, neither she nor I. Bless
her--for she has promised to be my wife.'
"And the old man blessed her with tears."
Abel Fletcher, grave, stern, uncompromising--as members of the Society
of Friends in that day were wont to be--is a clever study. He will not
yield readily to the influence of John, and when he does give way it is
by slow degrees. Yet one of the most winning traits in this somewhat
over-perfect young man, given at times to impress his moral obligations
rather brusquely, is the deference he pays to his former master and the
filial affection he keeps for him; and the author manages in these
scenes to put the two into excellent touch with each other--so that,
through John's attitude to him, the hard close-fisted old tanner is
transfigured into a patriarch who fitly gives his blessing to the bride,
and later on, in a scene of great pathos, bestows his last benediction
on her blind baby daughter.
It was said at the time of its publication, and it is still said, that
in "John Halifax" Miss Mulock reached the summit of her power. That she
felt this herself seems to be shown by her adopting the title of
"Author of 'John Halifax.'" Its publication was in many ways a new
departure. It was the first of that numerous series of books brought out
by her (after) life-long friend, Mr. Blackett. Those were not the days
when "twenty thousand copies were exhausted before a word of this novel
was written;" yet the book had a remarkable and legitimate success. Of
its merits a notable critic said, "If we could erase half a dozen
sentences from this book it would stand as one of the most beautiful
stories in the English language, conveying one of the highest moral
truths." And that these few sentences, while in no way affecting the
actual beauty of the story, are a blot and an "artistic and intellectual
blunder--" the more to be deplored in a book whose moral teaching
throughout is so excellent--we must confess. "The ragged boy, with his
open, honest face, as he asks the respectable Quaker for work, is no
beggar; the lad who drives the cart of dangling skins is not inferior to
Phineas Fletcher, who watches for him from his father's windows and
longs for his companionship; and the tanner--the honest and good man who
marries Ursula March, a lady born--is her equal. Having shown that men
in the sight of God are equal and that therefore all good men must be
equal upon earth, what need that John should have in his keeping a
little Greek Testament which he views as a most precious possession
because in it is written 'Guy Halifax, Gentleman'? Are we to conclude
that all his moral excellence and intellectual worth were derived from
_ladies_ and _gentlemen_ who had been his remote ancestors, but with
whom he had never been in personal contact at all, since at twelve years
old he was a ragged orphan, unable to read and write?"
Miss Mulock could not have meant this, and yet she lays herself open to
the charge, a kind of echo of which is heard in the adding to her good
plain title of "John Halifax" the unnecessary tag, "Gentleman."
* * * * *
Her literary career being now fully established, Miss Mulock decided on
taking up her permanent residence in London; and, about this time, she
went to live at Wildwood, a cottage at North End, Hampstead. The now
ubiquitous interviewer--that benefactor of those who want to know--had
not then been called into being, so there is no record at hand to tell
how the rooms were furnished, what the mistress wore, her likes,
dislikes, and the various idiosyncrasies she displayed in half an hour's
conversation. Such being the case we must be content with the simple
fact that, charming by the candid sincerity of her disposition, and the
many personal attractions that when young she possessed, Miss Mulock
speedily drew around her a circle of friends whom, with rare fidelity,
she ever after kept.
* * * * *