characters are very well drawn, save one, Lady Macfarren, who is
inhumanly hard. This, too, is one of the peculiarities of the forty or
forty-five year old novel; its people are terribly consistent in good or
evil. The dignity, the high-mindedness, the angelic purity of the
heroine is insupportable, and the stainless honour, the stern resistance
to temptation, the defiance of tyrannical wrongdoers, makes the hero
quite as bad.
In "Stuart of Dunleath," however, the hero is decidedly weak. He is the
guardian of Eleanor Raymond, the heroine, and, seeing a probability of
making a large profit by a speculative loan, risks her money, hoping to
obtain the means to buy back his estate without diminishing her fortune.
The speculation fails. Eleanor is reduced to poverty, and Stuart is
supposed to drown himself. Then the impoverished heroine, who is
desperately in love with her guardian, is compelled to marry a wealthy
baronet, Sir Stephen Penrhyn. This is the beginning of troubles, and
very bad troubles they are, continuing steadily through two-thirds of
the book.
Sir Stephen is a brutally bad husband, is shamelessly unfaithful,
personally violent, breaks his wife's arm, and makes her life a burden.
Her little twin sons are drowned in a boating accident, and then Stuart
returns from the grave, having been stopped in his attempt to drown
himself by a picturesque old clergyman, and started off to America,
where he manages to recover the lost fortune.
By his advice, Eleanor leaves her tyrant and takes steps to obtain a
divorce, but before the case is ready for hearing is seized with
scruples and gives up the attempt, chiefly because she fears she is
influenced by an unholy love for Stuart. Finally she gets leave of
absence from her amiable spouse, and dies of a broken heart before it
expires, Stuart having married her dearest friend, the brilliant Lady
Margaret Fordyce, thinking that Eleanor had no real affection for him.
The scruples are much to her credit, of course, but she might have tried
to save the remainder of her life from the degradation which must have
been the result of a reunion with her husband, yet kept aloof from
Stuart without offending God or breaking any sacred law.
Eighteen very distinct characters figure in these pages, and three or
four children. Of these the best drawn are those most lightly sketched.
The author's favourites are too much described, their merits, their
peculiarities, their faults (if allowed to have any) are detailed as the
writer sees them. But they do not act and live and develop themselves to
the reader, and, therefore, become abstractions, not living entities.
* * * * *
"Lost and Saved," written some dozen of years afterward, has much the
same qualities as "Stuart of Dunleath." The subsidiary characters are
more convincing than the leading ladies and gentlemen. The hero, if such
a man could be so termed, with his extreme selfishness, his surface
amiability, his infirmity of purpose and utter faithlessness, is well
drawn. There is a respectable hero also, but we do not see much of him,
which is not to be regretted, as he is an intolerable prig.
In this romance the heroine elopes with Treherne, the villainous hero.
(Of course, there are the usual family objections to their wedding.)
They intend to go to Trieste, but in the confusion of a night march they
get on board the wrong steamer, and find themselves at Alexandria. Here
Treherne is confronted with his aunt, the magnificent Marchioness of
Updown. He is therefore obliged to suppress Beatrice (the heroine) until
the Marchioness "moves on."
They consequently set off on a voyage up the Nile, apparently in search
of a clergyman to marry them. It seems, by the way, a curious sort of
hunting-ground in which to track an English parson. Then Beatrice falls
dangerously ill, and nothing will save her save a parson and the
marriage service. A benevolent and sympathetic young doctor is good
enough to simulate a British chaplain, and the knot is tied to the
complete satisfaction of Beatrice. Much misery ensues.
It must be added that the magnificent Marchioness of Updown is an
extraordinary picture. Besides being a peeress by marriage, she is the
daughter of an earl, an aristocrat born and bred. Yet her vulgarity is
amazing. Her stupid ill-nature, her ignorance, her speech and manner,
suggest the idea of a small shopkeeper in a shabby street.
In this novel Mrs. Norton portrays the whited-sepulchre sort of woman
very clearly in Milly, Lady Nesdale, who is admired and petted by
Society, always smiling, well tempered, well dressed, careful to observe
_les bienseances_, making herself pleasant even to her husband; while,
screened by this fair seeming, she tastes of a variety of forbidden
fruit, one mouthful of which would be enough to consign a less astute
woman to social death. This class of character figures largely in
present day novels, but few equal, none surpass, Mrs. Norton's masterly
touch.
"Old Sir Douglas," her last novel, was published in _Macmillan's
Magazine_, 1867. It is planned on the same lines as her previous works
of fiction--the plot rather complicated, the characters extremely
numerous; among these is an almost abnormally wicked woman who works
endless mischief.
* * * * *
It was, however, as a poetess that Mrs. Norton was chiefly known. Her
verse was graceful and harmonious, but more emotional than intellectual.
Wrath at injustice and cruelty stirred the depths of her soul; her heart
was keenly alive to the social evils around her and she longed
passionately for power to redress them. The effect of her own wrongs and
sufferings was to quicken her ardour to help her fellow women smarting
under English law as it at that time existed. What that law then
permitted is best exemplified by her own experience. When the legal
proceedings between her and her husband were over, and her innocence of
the charges brought against her was fully established, she was allowed
to see her children only _once_ for the space of half an hour in the
presence of two witnesses chosen by Mr. Norton, though this state of
things was afterwards ameliorated by the Infant Custody Act, which
allowed some little further restricted intercourse.
But these evil times are past. Indeed, it seems hard to believe that
barely fifty years separates the barbarous injustice of that period from
the decent amenities of this, as regards the respective rights of
husbands and wives.
Mrs. Norton's second poem of importance, "The Undying One," is founded
on the legend of the Wandering Jew, a subject always attractive to the
poetic imagination. It contains many charming lines, and touches on an
immense variety of topics, wandering, like its hero, over many lands.
The sufferings of isolation are vividly depicted, and isolation must, of
necessity, be the curse of endless life in this world.
"Thus, thus, to shrink from every outstretched hand,
To strive in secret and alone to stand,
Or, when obliged to mingle in the crowd,
Curb the pale lip which quiveringly obeys,
Gapes wide with sudden laughter, vainly loud,
Or writhes a faint, slow smile to meet their gaze.
This, this is hell! the soul which dares not show
The barbed sorrow which is rankling there,
Gives way at length beneath its weight of woe,
Withers unseen, and darkens to despair!"
In these days of rapidity and concentration, poems such as this would
never emerge from the manuscript stage, in which they might be read by
appreciative friends with abundant leisure.
The same observation applies to "The Dream." A mother sits watching the
slumber of her beautiful young daughter who, waking, tells her dream of
an exquisite life with the one she loves best, unshadowed by grief or
pain. The mother warns her that life will not be like this, and draws a
somewhat formidable picture of its realities. From this the girl
naturally shrinks, wondering where Good is to be found, and is answered
thus:
"He that deals blame, and yet forgets to praise,
Who sets brief storms against long summer days,
Hath a sick judgment.
And shall we _all_ condemn, and _all_ distrust,
Because some men are false and some unjust?"
Some of Mrs. Norton's best and most impassioned verses are to be found
in the dedication of this poem to her friend, the Duchess of Sutherland.
Affection, gratitude, indignation, grief, regret--_these_ are the
sources of Mrs. Norton's inspiration; but of any coldly intellectual
solution of life's puzzles, such as more modern writers affect, there is
little trace.
"The Lady of La Garaye" is a Breton tale (a true one) of a beautiful and
noble Chatelaine, on whom Heaven had showered all joy and blessing.
Adored by her husband, she shared every hour of his life and
accompanied him in his favourite sport of hunting. One day she dared to
follow him over too wide a leap. Her horse fell with and on her. She was
terribly injured, and crippled for life. After much lamenting she is
comforted by a good priest, and institutes a hospital for incurables,
she and her husband devoting themselves to good works for the remainder
of their days. The versification is smooth, the descriptions are
graceful and picturesque; but neither the subject nor its treatment is
enthralling.
Mrs. Norton's finest poetic efforts are to be found in her short pieces.
One entitled "Ataraxia" has a soothing charm, which owes half its melody
to the undertone of sadness which pervades the verse.
"Come forth! The sun hath flung on Thetis' breast
The glittering tresses of his golden hair;
All things are heavy with a noon-day rest,
And floating sea-birds cleave the stirless air.
Against the sky in outlines clear and rude
The cleft rocks stand, while sunbeams slant between
And lulling winds are murmuring through the wood
Which skirts the bright bay, with its fringe of green.
"Come forth! all motion is so gentle now
It seems thy step alone should walk the earth,
Thy voice alone, the 'ever soft and low,'
Wake the far haunting echoes into birth.
"Too wild would be Love's passionate store of hope,
Unmeet the influence of his changeful power,
Ours be companionship whose gentle scope
Hath charm enough for such a tranquil hour."
From the perusal of her writings, the impression given by her portrait,
and the reminiscences of one who knew her, we gather an idea of this
charming and gifted woman, whose nature seems to have been rich in all
that makes for the happiness of others, and of herself. We feel that she
possessed a mind abundantly stored, an imagination stimulated and
informed by sojourning in many lands; a heart, originally tender and
compassionate, mellowed by maternal love, a judgment trained and
restrained by constant intercourse with the best minds of the period, a
wit keen as a damascene blade, and a soul to feel, even to enthusiasm,
the wrongs and sufferings of others.
Add to these gifts the power of swift expression, and we can imagine
what a fascination Mrs. Norton must have possessed for those of her
contemporaries who had the privilege of knowing her. "She was the most
brilliant woman I ever met," said the late Charles Austen, "and her
brilliancy was like summer lightning; it dazzled, but did not hurt."
Unless, indeed, she was impelled to denounce some wrong or injustice,
when her words could strike home. Yet to this lovely and lovable woman,
life was a long disappointment; and through all she has written a strain
of profound rebellion against the irony of fate colours her views, her
delineations of character, her estimate of the social world. By her
relations and friends she was warmly appreciated.
She did not succeed in obtaining the relief of divorce until about 1853.
Mr. Norton survived till 1875, and in 1877, a few months before her
death, his widow married Sir William Stirling-Maxwell.
* * * * *
It is a curious instance of the change of fashion and the transient
nature of popular memory that great difficulty is experienced in
obtaining copies of Mrs. Norton's works, especially of her poems. "The
Undying One," "The Dream," and one or two smaller pieces, are found only
in the British Museum Library. The novels are embedded in the deeper
strata of Mudie's, but are not mentioned in the catalogue of that
all-embracing collection. Yet forty years ago, Mrs. Norton acknowledged
that she made at one time about L1400 a year by her pen, this chiefly by
her contributions to the annuals of that time.
Mrs. Norton, however, had not to contend with the cruel competition
which lowers prices while it increases labour. In her day, the workers
were few, and the employers less difficult to please. But these
comparisons are not only odious, but fruitless. The crowd, the
competition, the desperate struggle for life, exists, increases, and we
cannot alter it. We can but train for the contest as best we may, and
say with the lovely and sorely tried subject of this sketch, as she
writes in her poem to her absent boys:
"Though my lot be hard and lonely,
Yet I hope--I hope through all."
[Signature: Annie Hector]
("MRS. ALEXANDER")
"A. L. O. E." (MISS TUCKER)
MRS. EWING
_By_ MRS. MARSHALL
"A. L. O. E." (MISS TUCKER)
MRS. EWING
Forty years ago, the mystic letters "A. L. O. E." ("A Lady of England")
on the title-page of a book ensured its welcome from the children of
those days. There was not then the host of gaily bound volumes pouring
from the press to be piled up in tempting array in every bookseller's
shop at Christmas. The children for whom "A. L. O. E." wrote were
contented to read a "gift-book" more than once; and, it must be said,
her stories were deservedly popular, and bore the crucial test of being
read aloud to an attentive audience several times.
Many of these stories still live, and the allegorical style in which "A.
L. O. E." delighted has a charm for certain youthful minds to this day.
There is a pride and pleasure in thinking out the lessons hidden under
the names of the stalwart giants in the "Giant Killer," which is one of
"A. L. O. E.'s" earlier and best tales. A fight with Giant Pride, a hard
battle with Giant Sloth, has an inspiriting effect on boys and girls,
who are led to "look at home" and see what giants hold them in bondage.
"A. L. O. E.'s" style was almost peculiar to herself. She generally used
allegory and symbol, and she was fired with the desire to arrest the
attention of her young readers and "do them good." We may fear that she
often missed her aim by forcing the moral, and by indulging in long and
discursive "preachments," which interrupted the main current of the
story, and were impatiently skipped that it might flow on again without
vexatious hindrances.
In her early girlhood and womanhood "A. L. O. E." had written plays,
which, we are told by her biographer, Miss Agnes Giberne, were full of
wit and fun. Although her literary efforts took a widely different
direction when she began to write for children, still there are flashes
of humour sparkling here and there on the pages of her most didactic
stories, showing that her keen sense of the ludicrous was present though
it was kept very much in abeyance.
From the first publication of "The Claremont Tales" her success as a
writer for children was assured. The list of her books covering the
space of fifteen or twenty years is a very long one, and she had no
difficulty in finding publishers ready to bring them out in an
attractive form.
* * * * *
"The Rambles of a Rat" is before me, as I write, in a new edition, and
is a very fair specimen of "A. L. O. E.'s" work. Weighty sayings are put
into the mouth of the rats, and provoke a smile. The discussion about
the ancestry of Whiskerando and Ratto ends with the trite remark--which,
however, was not spoken aloud--that the great weakness of one opponent
was pride of birth, and his anxiety to be thought of an ancient family;
but the chief matter, in Ratto's opinion, was not whether our ancestors
do honour to us, but whether by our conduct we do not disgrace them.
Probably this page of the story was hastily turned here, that the
history of the two little waifs and strays who took shelter in the
warehouse, where the rats lived, might be followed.
Later on there is a discussion between a father and his little boy about
the advantage of ragged schools, then a somewhat new departure in
philanthropy. Imagine a boy of nine, in our time, exclaiming, "What a
glorious thing it is to have ragged schools and reformatories, to give
the poor and the ignorant, and the wicked, a chance of becoming honest
and happy." Boys of Neddy's age, nowadays, would denounce him as a
little prig, who ought to be well snubbed for his philanthropical
ambition, when he went on to say, "How I should like to build a ragged
school myself!" "The Voyage of the Rats to Russia" is full of interest
and adventure, and the glimpse of Russian life is vivid, and in "A. L.
O. E.'s" best manner.
Indeed, she had a graphic pen, and her descriptions of places and things
were always true to life. In "Pride and his Prisoners," for instance,
there are stirring scenes, drawn with that dramatic power which had
characterised the plays she wrote in her earlier days. "The Pretender, a
farce in two Acts, by Charlotte Maria Tucker," is published in Miss
Giberne's biography. In this farce there is a curious and constantly
recurring play on words, but the allegory and the symbol with which she
afterwards clothed her stories are absent.
* * * * *
"A. L. O. E." did not write merely to _amuse_ children; and the
countless fairy tales and books of startling adventure, in their gilded
covers and with their profuse illustrations, which are published every
year, have thrown her stories into the shade. But they are written with
verve and spirit, and in good English, which is high praise, and cannot
always be given to the work of her successors in juvenile literature. In
her books, as in every work she undertook throughout her life, she had
the high and noble aim of doing good. Whether she might have widened the
sphere of her influence by less of didactic teaching, and by allowing
her natural gifts to have more play, it is not for us to inquire.
It is remarkable that this long practice in allegory and symbol fitted
her for her labours in her latter years, amongst the boys and girls of
the Far East. Her style was well adapted to the Oriental mind, and
kindled interest and awoke enthusiasm in the hearts of the children in
the Batala Schools. Here she did a great work, which she undertook at
the age of fifty-four, when she offered her services to the Church
Missionary Society as an unpaid missionary.
"All for love, and no reward" may surely be said to be "A. L. O. E.'s"
watchword, as, with untiring energy, she laboured amongst the children
in a distant part of the empire. Even there she was busy as an author.
By her fertile pen she could reach thousands in that part of India who
would never see her face or hear her voice. She wrote for India as she
had written for England, ever keeping before her the good of her
readers. The Hindu boys and girls, as well as the children of this
country, have every reason to hold her name in grateful remembrance as
one of the authors who have left a mark on the reign of Queen Victoria.
MRS. EWING
There lingers over some people whom we know a nameless charm. It is
difficult to define it, and yet we feel it in their presence as we feel
the subtle fragrance of flowers, borne to us on the wings of the fresh
breeze, which has wandered over gorse and heather, beds of wild
hyacinth, and cowslip fields, in the early hours of a sunny spring day.
A charm like this breathes over the stories which Mrs. Ewing has left as
an inheritance for English children, and for their elders also, for all
time. The world must be better for her work; and looking back over the
sometimes toilsome paths of authorship, this surely, above all others,
is the guerdon all craftswomen of the pen should strive to win.
There is nothing morbid or melodramatic in Mrs. Ewing's beautiful
stories. They bubble over with the joys of child-life; they bristle with
its humour; they touch its sorrows with a tender, sympathetic hand; they
lend a gentle sadness of farewell to Death itself, with the sure hope of
better things to come.
* * * * *
It was in 1861 and 1862 that those who were looking for healthy stories
for children found, in "Melchior's Dream and other Tales," precisely
what they wanted. Soon after, _Aunt Judy's Magazine_, edited by Mrs.
Ewing's mother, Mrs. Gatty, made a new departure in the periodical
literature for children. The numbers were eagerly looked for month by
month, and the title of the magazine was given to commemorate the "Judy"
of the nursery, who had often kept a bevy of little brothers and sisters
happy and quiet by pouring forth into their willing ears stories full of
the prowess of giants, the freaks of fairies, with occasional but always
good-natured shafts aimed at the little faults and frailties of the
listening children.
_Aunt Judy's Magazine_ had no contributions from Mrs. Ewing's pen till
May 1866 and May 1867. Then the delightful "Remembrances of Mrs.
Overtheway" enchanted her youthful readers. Little Ida's own story and
her lonely childhood had an especial charm for them; and Mrs.
Overtheway's remembrances of the far-off days when she, too, was a
child, were told as things that had really happened. And so they had!
For, in the disappointment of the imaginative child who had created a
fair vision from her grandmother's description of Mrs. Anastasia Moss as
a golden-haired beauty in rose-bud brocade, and instead, saw an old lady
with sunken black eyes, dressed in _feuilles mortes_ satin, many a child
may have found the salient parts of her own experience rehearsed!
"Alas!" says Mrs. Overtheway, when little Ida, soothed by her gentle
voice, has fallen asleep. "Alas! my grown-up friends, does the moral
belong to children only? Have manhood and womanhood no passionate,
foolish longings, for which we blind ourselves to obvious truth, and of
which the vanity does not lessen the disappointment? Do we not all toil
after rose-buds to find _feuilles mortes_?" It is in touches like this,
in her stories, that Mrs. Ewing appeals to many older hearts as well as
to those of the young dreamers, taking their first steps in the journey
of life.
In 1857, Juliana Horatia Gatty married Alexander Ewing, A.P.D., and for
some time "Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances" were not continued. The last
of them, "Kerguelin's Land," is considered by some critics the most
beautiful of the series, ending with the delightful surprise of little
Ida's joy in the return of her lost father.
* * * * *
Mrs. Ewing's stories are so rich in both humour and pathos, that it is
difficult to choose from them distinctive specimens of her style, and of
that charm which pervades them, a charm which we think is peculiarly her
own.
Mrs. Ewing gave an unconsciously faithful portrait of herself in "Madam
Liberality." The reader has in this story glimpses of the author's own
heroic and self-forgetful childhood. Perhaps this tale is not as well
known as some which followed it: so a few notes from its pages may not
be unwelcome here.
Madam Liberality, when a little girl, was accustomed to pick out all the
plums from her own slice of cake and afterwards make a feast with them
for her brothers and sisters and the dolls. Oyster shells served for
plates, and if by any chance the plums did not go round the party, the
shell before Madam Liberality's place was always the empty one. Her
eldest brother had given her the title of Madam Liberality; and yet he
could, with refreshing frankness, shake his head at her and say, "You
are the most _meanest_ and the _generousest_ person I ever knew."
Madam Liberality wept over this accusation, and it was the grain of
truth in it that made her cry, for it was too true that she screwed, and
saved, and pinched to have the pleasure of "giving away." "Tom, on the
contrary, gave away without pinching and saving. This sounds much
handsomer, and it was poor Tom's misfortune that he always believed it
to be so, though he gave away what did not belong to him, and fell back
for the supply of his own pretty numerous wants upon other people, not
forgetting Madam Liberality."
What a clever analysis of character is this! We have all known the
"Toms," for they are numerous, and some of us have known and but
scantily appreciated the far rarer "Madam Liberalitys."