YOU have asked me to tell you all about _Judith Crowhurst_. I will tell
you something more and begin at the beginning. You will remember that
Miss Hardman said to Mrs. Pryor, Mrs. Hardman’s governess: ‘WE need the
imprudences, extravagances, mistakes and crimes of a certain number of
fathers to sow the seed from which WE reap the harvest of governesses.
The daughters of tradespeople, however well educated, must necessarily be
under-bred, and as such unfit to be inmates of OUR dwellings, or
guardians of OUR children’s minds and persons. WE shall ever prefer to
place those about OUR offspring, who have been born and bred with
somewhat of the same refinement as OURSELVES.’ I was one of those
unhappy women who, mercifully for the upper classes, inherit manners and
misery in order that the children of these superior creatures may not put
an ‘r’ at the end of ‘idea’ and may learn how to sit down in a chair with
propriety. My father was a clergyman holding a small country living. He
died when I was five-and-twenty, and I had to teach in order to earn my
bread. I obtained a tolerably good situation, but at the end of two
years I was informed that, although a clergyman’s daughter would ‘do very
well’ so long as her pupils were quite young, it was now time that they
should be handed over to a lady who had been accustomed to Society. I
had become thoroughly weary of my work. I was not enthusiastic to
instruct girls for whom I did not care. I suppose that if I had been a
born teacher, I should have been as happy with the little Hardmans as I
was in the nursery with my youngest sister now dead. I should not have
said to myself, as I did every morning, ‘What does it matter?’ In my
leisure moments and holidays during those two years I had written a
novel. I could supply conversation and description, but it was very
difficult to invent a plot, and still more difficult to invent one which
of itself would speak. I had collected a quantity of matter of all kinds
before I began, and then I cast about for a frame in which to fit it. At
last I settled that my hero, if hero he could be called, should fall in
love with a poor but intelligent and educated girl. He had a fortune of
about two thousand pounds a year, nearly the whole of which he lost
through the defalcations of a brother, whose creditors received about
five shillings in the pound. He felt that the fair name of his family
was stained, and he was consumed with a passion to repay his brother’s
debts and to recover possession of the old house and land which had been
sold. He went abroad, worked hard, and met with a lady who was rich whom
he really admired. His love for his betrothed had been weakened by
absence, the engagement, for some trifling reason, was broken off, and he
married the heiress. At the end of five years he returned to England,
discharged every liability, and in two years more was the owner of his
birthplace. The marriage, alas! was unhappy. There was no obtrusive
fault in his wife, but he did not love her. She could not understand his
resolution to take upon himself his brother’s debts, and she thought the
price he paid for the house was excessive, as indeed it was. She was a
good manager, but without imagination. He was rejoicing, in her
presence, one spring morning that he had been wakened by the clamour of
the rooks with which he had been familiar ever since he was a boy, and
her reply was that an estate equal in value to his own and possessing a
bigger rookery had been offered him for less money by one-third than he
had thrown away. Unfortunately it is not in management or morality that
we crave companionship. It is in religion and in the deepest emotions
that we thirst for it. Gradually he became wretched, and life was almost
unbearable. She took no pleasure in the ancient place and its beautiful
garden, he never asked her to admire them, and there was neither son nor
daughter to inherit his pious regard. At this point I was obliged to
introduce the _Deus ex machina_, and the wife died. The widower sought
out his first love; she had never wavered in her affection to him; they
were married, had children, and were happy.
My tale was a youthful blunder. It was not really a tale. I introduced,
in order to provide interest, all sorts of accessories—aunts, parsons,
gamekeepers, nurses, a fire and some hairbreadth escapes, but they were
none of them essential and they were all manufactured. The only parts
not worthless were those which were autobiographical.
One of them I remember very well, although my MS. was burnt long ago. I
believed then that Nature is not merely beautiful, but that she can speak
words which we can hear if we listen devoutly, and that if personality
has any meaning she is personal,
‘The guide, the guardian of the heart and soul.’
Towards the end of an autumn afternoon I had rambled up to the pillar
which was a landmark to seven counties. It was wet during the morning,
but at five o’clock the rain ceased and a long, irregular line of ragged
cloud, dripping here and there, stretched itself above the opposite hills
from east to west. Underneath it was a border of pale-golden, open sky,
and below was the sea. The hills hid it, but I knew it was there. I was
hushed and reassured. When I got home I transferred my emotion to my
deserted heroine, and tears blotted the paper. But it was a mere
episode, without connection and, in fact, an obstruction.
I sent my manuscript to a publisher and need hardly say that it was
returned as unsuitable. I tried two others, but with no success. The
third enclosed a copy of his reader’s opinion. Here it is:—
‘ . . . is obviously a first attempt. It evinces some power in passages,
but the characters lack distinction and are limited by ordinary
conventional rules. I cannot recommend it to you for its own sake, and
there is no prospect in it of anything better. The author might be
capable of short stories for a religious magazine. It is singular that
Miss C.’s _Mariana_, which you also sent me, should be on somewhat the
same lines, but Mariana, his first love, is seduced by the man who
forsakes her and, in the end, marries her as his second wife. During his
first marriage his intimacy with Mariana continues and Miss C. thereby
has an opportunity, which she used with much power, for realistic scenes,
that I believe will prove attractive. I had no hesitation therefore in
advising you to purchase _Mariana_, although the plot is crude.’ I could
not take the publisher’s hint. I put my papers back into my box and
obtained another situation. In about a twelvemonth, notwithstanding my
disappointment, I was unable to restrain myself from trying again. I
fancied that I might be able to project myself into actual history and
appropriate it. I had been much attracted to Mary Tudor, and I had
studied everything about her on which I could lay my hands. I did not
love her, but I pitied her profoundly, and the Holbein portrait of her
seemed to me to indicate a terrible and pathetic secret. I cannot,
however, give a complete explanation of her fascination for me. It is
impossible to account for the resistless magnetism with which one human
being draws another. The elements are too various and are compounded
with too much subtlety. Bitter Roman Catholic as Mary was, I wished I
could have been one of the ladies of her court, that I might have offered
my heart to her and might have wept with her in her sorrow. But my
intense feeling for a picture of the Queen was no qualification to paint
the original, and although I strove to keep close to facts she insensibly
became myself. I was altogether stopped when I happened to meet with
Aubrey de Vere’s _Mary Tudor_ and Tennyson’s _Queen Mary_.
Soon afterwards I read _Jane Eyre_ again, and was more than ever
astonished at it. It is not to be classed; it is written not by a
limited human personality but by Nature herself. The love in it is too
great for creatures who are ‘even as the generations of leaves’; the
existence of two mortals does not account for it. There is an
irresistible sweep in it like that of the Atlantic Ocean in a winter’s
storm hurling itself over the western rocks of Scilly. I do not wonder
that people were afraid of the book and that it was cursed. The orthodox
daughter of a country parson broke conventional withes as if they were
cobwebs. _Jane Eyre_ is not gross in a single word, but its freedom is
more complete than that of a licentious modern novel. Do you recollect
St. John Rivers says to Jane: ‘Try to restrain the disproportionate
fervour with which you throw yourself into commonplace home pleasures.
Don’t cling so tenaciously to ties of the flesh; save your constancy and
ardour for an adequate cause; forbear to waste them on trite, transient
objects. Do you hear, Jane?’
She replies—‘Yes; just as if you were speaking Greek. I feel I have
adequate cause to be happy, and I _will_ be happy. Good-bye!’
Therein speaks the worshipper of the Sun. Do you also recollect that
voice in the night from Rochester? She breaks from St. John, goes up to
her bedroom and prays. ‘In my way—a different way to St. John’s, but
effective in its own fashion. I seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty
Spirit; and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His feet. I rose from the
thanksgiving—took a resolve—and lay down, unscared, enlightened—eager but
for the daylight.’ The Mighty Spirit, who was Jane Eyre’s God, had
directed her not to go to India as St. John’s bride to save souls from
damnation by conversion to Jehovah, but to set off that very day to
Rochester at Thornfield Hall.
Consider also how inseparably the important incidents in _Jane Eyre_ are
linked with one another and with character. Jane refused Rochester at
first and St. John finally. She could not possibly do otherwise. But I
must stop. You did not ask for an essay on Charlotte Bronte. Suffice it
to say that when I had finished _Jane Eyre_ I said to myself that I would
not write any more. Nor did I ever attempt fiction again. _Judith
Crowhurst_ is a plain, true story, altered a little in order to prevent
recognition. I knew her well. There is no suffering in any stage
tragedy equal to that of the unmarried woman who is well brought up, with
natural gifts above those of women generally, living on a small income,
past middle-age, and unable to work. It is not the suffering which is
acute torture ending in death, but worse, the black, moveless gloom of
the second floor in Hackney or Islington. Almost certainly she has but
few friends, and those she has will be occupied with household or
wage-earning duties. She is afraid of taking up their time; she never
calls without an excuse. What is she to do? She cannot read all day,
and, if she could, what is the use of reading? Poets and philosophers do
not touch her case; descriptions of moonlit seas, mountains, moors, and
waterfalls darken by contrast the view of the tiles and chimneys from her
own window. Ideas do not animate or interest her, for she never has a
chance of expressing them and, lacking expression, they are indistinct.
Her eyes wander down page after page of her book, but she is only
half-conscious. Religion, such as it is now, gives no help. It is based
on the necessity of forgiveness for some wrong done and on the notion of
future salvation. She needs no forgiveness unless she takes upon herself
a burden of artificial guilt. She rather feels she has to forgive—whom
or what she does not know. The heaven of the churches and chapels is
remote, unprovable, and cannot affect her in the smallest degree. There
is no religion for her and such as she, excepting that Catholic Faith of
one article only—_The clods of the valley shall be sweet unto him_. As I
have said, I knew Judith Crowhurst well, and after she was dead I wrote
her biography, because I believed there are thousands like her in London
alone. I hoped that here and there I might excite sympathy with them.
We sympathise when we sit in a theatre overpowered by stage agony, but a
truer sympathy is that which may require some effort, pity for common,
dull, and deadly trouble that does not break out in shrieks and is not
provided with metre and scenery.
You were kind enough to get _Judith Crowhurst_ published for me, and it
has had what is called a ‘success,’ but I doubt if it will do any good.
People devour books but, when they have finished one, they never ask
themselves what is to be done. It is immediately followed by another on
a different subject, and reading becomes nothing but a pastime or a
narcotic. _Judith_ may be admired, but it is by those who will not
undergo the fatigue of a penny journey in an omnibus to see their own
Judith, perhaps nearly related to them, and will excuse themselves
because she is not entertaining.
I was asked the other day if I was not proud of some of the reviews.
Good God! I would rather have been Alice Ayres, {148} and have died as
she died, than have been famous as the author of the _Divine Comedy_,
_Paradise Lost_, or _Hamlet_. She is now forgotten and sleeps in an
obscure grave in some London cemetery. No! there will be nothing more.
I have said all I had to say.