penned in sober earnest, as representing an existing state of things!
There is an antique, musty, long-secluded flavor about it, that would
suggest a monograph copied from an Egyptian tomb with thirty centuries
of dust upon its hoary head. Yet Rosamond, sitting “modestly silent”
under the delusion that grown-up people are worth listening to, can
talk fluently enough when occasion demands it, though at all times her
strength lies rather in her heart than in her head. She represents that
tranquil, unquestioning, unselfish family love, which Miss Edgeworth
could describe so well because she felt it so sincerely. The girl who
had three stepmothers and nineteen brothers and sisters, and managed
to be fond of them all, should be good authority on the subject of
domestic affections; and that warm, happy, loving atmosphere which
charms us in her stories, and which brought tears to Sir Walter
Scott’s eyes when he laid down Simple Susan, is only the reflection of
the cheerful home life she steadfastly helped to brighten.
Her restrictions as a writer are perhaps most felt by those who admire
her most. Her pet virtue--after prudence--is honesty; and yet how
poor a sentiment it becomes under her treatment!--no virtue at all,
in fact, but merely a policy working for its own gain. Take the long
conversation between the little Italian merchants on the respective
merits of integrity and sharpness in their childish traffic. Each
disputant exhausts his wits in trying to prove the superior wisdom
of his own course, but not once does the virtuous Francisco make use
of the only argument which is of any real value,--I do not cheat
because it is not right. There is more to be learned about honesty,
real unselfish, unrequited honesty, in Charles Lamb’s little sketch of
Barbara S---- than in all Miss Edgeworth has written on the subject in
a dozen different tales.
“Taking up one’s cross does not at all mean having ovations at dinner
parties, and being put over everybody else’s head,” says Ruskin,
with visible impatience at the smooth and easy manner in which Miss
Edgeworth persists in grinding the mills of the gods, and distributing
poetical justice to each and every comer. It may be very nice to see
the generous Laura, who gave away her half sovereign, extolled to the
skies by a whole room full of company, “disturbed for the purpose,”
while “poor dear little Rosamond”--he too has a weakness for this small
blunderer--is left in the lurch, without either shoes or jar; but it
is not real generosity that needs so much commendation, and it is not
real life that can be depended on for giving it. Yet Ruskin admits
that Harry and Lucy were his earliest friends, to the extent even of
inspiring him with an ambitious desire to continue their history; and
he cannot say too much in praise of an authoress “whose every page is
so full and so delightful. I can read her over and over again, without
ever tiring. No one brings you into the company of pleasanter or wiser
people; no one tells you more truly how to do right.”[10]
He might have added that no one ever was more moderate in her
exactions. The little people who brighten Miss Edgeworth’s pages are
not expected, like the children in more recent books, to take upon
their shoulders a load of grown-up duties and responsibilities. Life is
simplified for them by an old-fashioned habit of trusting in the wisdom
of their parents; and these parents, instead of being foolish and
wrong-headed, so as to set off more strikingly the child’s sagacious
energy, are apt to be very sensible and kind, and remarkably well
able to take care of themselves and their families. This is the more
refreshing because, after reading a few modern stories, either English
or American, one is troubled with serious doubts as to the moral
usefulness of adults; and we begin to feel that as we approach the age
of Mentor it behooves us to find some wise young Telemachus who will
consent to be our protector and our guide. There is no more charming
writer for the young than Flora Shaw; yet Hector and Phyllis Browne,
and even that group of merry Irish children in Castle Blair, are all
convinced it is their duty to do some difficult or dangerous work in
the interests of humanity, and all are afflicted with a premature
consciousness of social evils.
“The time is out of joint; oh, cursed spite!
That ever I was born to set it right!”
cries Hamlet wearily; but it is at thirty, and not at thirteen, that he
makes this unpleasant discovery.
In religious stories, of which there are many hundreds published every
year, these peculiar views are even more defined, presenting themselves
often in the form of a spiritual contest between highly endowed,
sensitive children and their narrow-minded parents and guardians, who,
of course, are always in the wrong. The clever authoress of Thrown
Together is by no means innocent of this unwholesome tone; but the
chief offender, and one who has had a host of dismal imitators, is
Susan Warner,--Miss Wetherell,--who plainly considered that virtue,
especially in the young, was of no avail unless constantly undergoing
persecution. Her supernaturally righteous little girls, who pin
notes on their fathers’ dressing-tables, requesting them to become
Christians, and who endure the most brutal treatment--at their parents’
hands--rather than sing songs on Sunday evening, are equaled only by
her older heroines, who divide their time impartially between flirting
and praying, between indiscriminate kisses and passionate searching for
light. A Blackwood critic declares that there is more kissing done in
The Old Helmet than in all of Sir Walter Scott’s novels put together,
and utters an energetic protest against the penetrating glances, and
earnest pressing of hands, and brotherly embraces, and the whole vulgar
paraphernalia of pious flirtation, so immeasurably hurtful to the
undisciplined fancy of the young. “They have good reason to expect,”
he growls, “from these pictures of life, that if they are very good,
and very pious, and very busy in doing grown-up work, when they reach
the mature age of sixteen or so, some young gentleman who has been
in love with them all along will declare himself at the very nick of
time; and they may then look to find themselves, all the struggles of
life over, reposing a weary head on his stalwart shoulder.... Mothers,
never in great favor with novelists, are sinking deeper and deeper in
their black books,--there is a positive jealousy of their influence;
while the father in the religious tale, as opposed to the moral or
sentimental, is commonly either a scamp or nowhere. The heroine has,
so to say, to do her work single-handed.”
In some of these stories, moreover, the end justifies the means to
an alarming extent. Girls who steal money from their relatives in
order to go as missionaries among the Indians, and young women who
pretend to sit up with the sick that they may slip off unattended to
hear some inspired preacher in a barn, are not safe companions even
in books; while, if no grave indiscretion be committed, the lesson of
self-righteousness is taught on every page. Not very long ago I had
the pleasure of reading a tale in which the youthful heroine considers
it her mission in life to convert her grandparents; and while there
is nothing to prevent an honest girl from desiring such a thing, the
idea is not a happy one for a narrative, in view of certain homely
old adages irresistibly associated with the notion. “Girls,” wrote
Hannah More, “should be led to distrust their own judgment;” but if
they have the conversion of their grandparents on their hands, how can
they afford to be distrustful? Hannah More is unquestionably out of
date, and so, we fear, is that English humorist who said, “If all the
grown-up people in the world should suddenly fail, what a frightful
thing would society become, reconstructed by boys!” Evidently he had
in mind a land given over to toffy and foot-ball, but he was strangely
mistaken in his notions. Perhaps the carnal little hero of Vice Versâ
might have managed matters in this disgraceful fashion; but with Flora
Shaw’s earnest children at the helm, society would be reconstructed on
a more serious basis than it is already, and Heaven knows this is not
a change of which we stand in need. In fact, if the young people who
live and breathe around us are one third as capable, as strenuous, as
clear-sighted, as independent, as patronizing, and as undeniably our
superiors as their modern counterparts in literature, who can doubt
that the eternal cause of progress would be furthered by the change?
And is it, after all, mere pique which inclines us to Miss Edgeworth’s
ordinary little boys and girls, who, standing half dazed on the
threshold of life, stretch out their hands with childish confidence for
help?
FOOTNOTES:
[8] _Literary Studies_, vol. ii.
[9] _A Book of Sibyls._
[10] _Ethics of the Dust._
THE DECAY OF SENTIMENT.
That useful little phrase, “the complexity of modern thought,” has been
so hard worked of late years that it seems like a refinement of cruelty
to add to its obligations. Begotten by the philosophers, born of the
essayists, and put out to nurse among the novel-writers, it has since
been apprenticed to the whole body of scribblers, and drudges away at
every trade in literature. How, asks Vernon Lee, can we expect our
fiction to be amusing, when a psychological and sympathetic interest
has driven away the old hard-hearted spirit of comedy? How, asks Mr.
Pater, can Sebastian Van Stork make up his mind to love and marry and
work like ordinary mortals, when the many-sidedness of life has wrought
in him a perplexed envy of those quiet occupants of the churchyard,
“whose deceasing was so long since over”? How, asks George Eliot,
can Mrs. Pullet weep with uncontrolled emotion over Mrs. Sutton’s
dropsy, when it behooves her not to crush her sleeves or stain her
bonnet-strings? The problem is repeated everywhere, either in mockery
or deadly earnestness, according to the questioner’s disposition, and
the old springs of simple sentiment are drying fast within us. It is
heartless to laugh, it is foolish to cry, it is indiscreet to love,
it is morbid to hate, and it is intolerant to espouse any cause with
enthusiasm.
There was a time, and not so many years ago, when men and women found
no great difficulty in making up their minds on ordinary matters, and
their opinions, if erroneous, were at least succinct and definite.
Nero was then a cruel tyrant, the Duke of Wellington a great soldier,
Sir Walter Scott the first of novelists, and the French Revolution
a villainous piece of business. Now we are equally enlightened and
confused by the keen researches and shifting verdicts with which
historians and critics seek to dispel this comfortable frame of
darkness. Nero, perhaps, had the good of his subjects secretly at
heart when he expressed that benevolent desire to dispatch them all at
a blow, and Robespierre was but a practical philanthropist, carried,
it may be, a little too far by the stimulating influences of the
hour. “We have palliations of Tiberius, eulogies of Henry VIII., and
devotional exercises to Cromwell,” observes Mr. Bagehot, in some
perplexity as to where this state of things may find an ending; and he
confesses that in the mean time his own original notions of right and
wrong are growing sadly hazy and uncertain. Moreover, in proportion
as the heavy villains of history assume a chastened and ascetic
appearance, its heroes dwindle perceptibly into the commonplace, and
its heroines are stripped of every alluring grace; while as for the
living men who are controlling the destinies of nations, not even
Macaulay’s ever useful schoolboy is too small and ignorant to refuse
them homage. Yet we read of Scott, in the zenith of his fame, standing
silent and abashed before the Duke of Wellington, unable, and perhaps
unwilling, to shake off the awe that paralyzed his tongue. “The Duke
possesses every one mighty quality of the mind in a higher degree than
any other man either does or has ever done!” exclaimed Sir Walter to
John Ballantyne, who, not being framed for hero-worship, failed to
appreciate his friend’s extraordinary enthusiasm. While we smile at
the sentiment,--knowing, of course, so much better ourselves,--we feel
an envious admiration of the happy man who uttered it.
There is a curious little incident which Mrs. Lockhart used to relate,
in after years, as a proof of her father’s emotional temperament,
and of the reverence with which he regarded all that savored of past
or present greatness. When the long-concealed Scottish regalia were
finally brought to light, and exhibited to the public of Edinburgh,
Scott, who had previously been one of the committee chosen to unlock
the chest, took his daughter to see the royal jewels. She was then
a girl of fifteen, and her nerves had been so wrought upon by all
that she had heard on the subject that, when the lid was opened, she
felt herself growing faint, and withdrew a little from the crowd.
A light-minded young commissioner, to whom the occasion suggested
no solemnity, took up the crown, and made a gesture as if to place
it on the head of a lady standing near, when Sophia Scott heard her
father exclaim passionately, in a voice “something between anger and
despair,” “By G--, no!” The gentleman, much embarrassed, immediately
replaced the diadem, and Sir Walter, turning aside, saw his daughter,
deadly pale, leaning against the door, and led her at once into the
open air. “He never spoke all the way home,” she added, “but every
now and then I felt his arm tremble; and from that time I fancied he
began to treat me more like a woman than a child. I thought he liked me
better, too, than he had ever done before.”
The whole scene, as we look back upon it now, is a quaint illustration
of how far a man’s emotions could carry him, when they were nourished
alike by the peculiarities of his genius and of his education. The
feeling was doubtless an exaggerated one, but it was at least nobler
than the speculative humor with which a careless crowd now calculates
the market value of the crown jewels in the Tower of London. “What
they would bring” was a thought which we may be sure never entered Sir
Walter’s head, as he gazed with sparkling eyes on the modest regalia
of Scotland, and conjured up every stirring drama in which they had
played their part. For him each page of his country’s history was the
subject of close and loving scrutiny. All those Davids, and Williams,
and Malcolms, about whom we have an indistinct notion that they spent
their lives in being bullied by their neighbors and badgered by their
subjects, were to his mind as kingly as Charlemagne on his Throne of
the West; and their crimes and struggles and brief glorious victories
were part of the ineffaceable knowledge of his boyhood. To _feel_
history in this way, to come so close to the world’s actors that our
pulses rise and fall with their vicissitudes, is a better thing, after
all, than the most accurate and reasonable of doubts. I knew two little
English girls who always wore black frocks on the 30th of January,
in honor of the “Royal Martyr,” and tied up their hair with black
ribbons, and tried hard to preserve the decent gravity of demeanor
befitting such a doleful anniversary. The same little girls, it must
be confessed, carried Holmby House to bed with them, and bedewed their
pillows with many tears over the heart-rending descriptions thereof.
What to them were the “outraged liberties of England,” which Mr. Gosse
rather vaguely tells us tore King Charles to pieces? They saw him
standing on the scaffold, a sad and princely figure, and they heard
the frightened sobs that rent the air when the cruel deed was done.
It is not possible for us now to take this picturesque and exclusive
view of one whose shortcomings have been so vigorously raked to
light by indignant disciples of Carlyle; but the child who has ever
cried over any great historic tragedy is richer for the experience,
and stands on higher ground than one whose life is bounded by the
schoolroom walls, or who finds her needful stimulant in the follies of
a precocious flirtation. What a charming picture we have of Eugénie
de Guérin feeding her passionate little soul with vain regrets for
the unfortunate family of Louis XVI. and with sweet infantile plans
for their rescue. “Even as a child,” she writes in her journal, “I
venerated this martyr, I loved this victim whom I heard so much talked
of in my family as the 21st of January drew near. We used to be
taken to the funeral service in the church, and I gazed at the high
catafalque, the melancholy throne of the good king. My astonishment
impressed me with sorrow and indignation. I came away weeping over this
death, and hating the wicked men who had brought it about. How many
hours have I spent devising means for saving Louis, the queen, and the
whole hapless family,--if I only had lived in their day. But after much
calculating and contriving, no promising measure presented itself, and
I was forced, very reluctantly, to leave the prisoners where they were.
My compassion was more especially excited for the beautiful little
Dauphin, the poor child pent up between walls, and unable to play in
freedom. I used to carry him off in fancy, and keep him safely hidden
at Cayla, and Heaven only knows the delight of running about our fields
with a prince.”
Here at least we see the imaginative faculty playing a vigorous and
wholesome part in a child’s mental training. The little solitary French
girl who filled up her lonely hours with such pretty musings as these,
could scarcely fail to attain that rare distinction of mind which all
true critics have been so prompt to recognize and love. It was with
her the natural outgrowth of an intelligence, quickened by sympathy
and fed with delicate emotions. The Dauphin in the Temple, the Princes
in the Tower, Marie Antoinette on the guillotine, and Jeanne d’Arc at
the stake, these are the scenes which have burned their way into many
a youthful heart, and the force of such early impressions can never
be utterly destroyed. A recent essayist, deeply imbued with this good
principle, has assured us that the little maiden who, ninety years
ago, surprised her mother in tears, “because the wicked people had cut
off the French queen’s head,” received from that impression the very
highest kind of education. But this is object-teaching carried to its
extremest limit, and even in these days, when training is recognized
to be of such vital importance, one feels that the death of a queen is
a high price to pay for a little girl’s instruction. It might perhaps
suffice to let her live more freely in the past, and cultivate her
emotions after a less costly and realistic fashion.
On the other hand, Mr. Edgar Saltus, who is nothing if not melancholy,
would fain persuade us that the “gift of tears,” which Swinburne prized
so highly and Mrs. Browning cultivated with such transparent care,
finds its supreme expression in man, only because of man’s greater
capacity for suffering. Yet if it be true that the burden of life grows
heavier for each succeeding generation, it is no less apparent that
we have taught ourselves to stare dry-eyed at its blankness. An old
rabbinical legend says that in Paradise God gave the earth to Adam and
tears to Eve, and it is a cheerless doctrine which tells us now that
both gifts are equal because both are valueless, that the world will
never be any merrier, and that we are all tired of waxing sentimental
over its lights and shadows. But our great-grandfathers, who were
assuredly not a tender-hearted race, and who never troubled their
heads about those modern institutions, wickedly styled by Mr. Lang
“Societies for Badgering the Poor,” cried right heartily over poems,
and novels, and pictures, and plays, and scenery, and everything, in
short, that their great-grandsons would not now consider as worthy of
emotion. Jeffrey the terrible shed tears over the long-drawn pathos of
little Nell, and has been roundly abused by critics ever since for the
extremely bad taste he exhibited. Macaulay, who was seldom disposed
to be sentimental, confesses that he wept over Florence Dombey. Lord
Byron was strongly moved when Scott recited to him his favorite ballad
of Hardyknute; and Sir Walter himself paid the tribute of his tears to
Mrs. Opie’s dismal stories, and Southey’s no less dismal Pilgrimage to
Waterloo. When Marmion was first published, Joanna Baillie undertook to
read it aloud to a little circle of literary friends, and on reaching
those lines which have reference to her own poems,
“When she the bold enchantress came,
With fearless hand, and heart in flame,”
the “uncontrollable emotion” of her hearers forced the fair reader to
break down. In a modern drawing-room this uncontrollable emotion would
probably find expression in such gentle murmurs of congratulation as
“Very pretty and appropriate, I am sure,” or “How awfully nice in Sir
Walter to have put it in that way!”
Turn where we will, however, amid the pages of the past, we see this
precious gift of tears poured out in what seems to us now a spirit of
wanton profusion. Sterne, by his own showing, must have gone through
life like the Walrus, in Through the Looking Glass,
“Holding his pocket handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes;”
and we can detect him every now and then peeping slyly out of the
folds, to see what sort of an impression he was making. “I am as weak
as a woman,” he sighs, with conscious satisfaction, “and I beg the
world not to smile, but pity me.” Burns, who at least never cried
for effect, was moved to sudden tears by a pathetic print of a dead
soldier, that hung on Professor Fergusson’s wall. Scott was always
visibly affected by the wild northern scenery that he loved; and
Erskine was discovered in the Cave of Staffa, “weeping like a woman,”
though, in truth, a gloomy, dangerous, slippery, watery cavern is
the last place on earth where a woman would ordinarily stop to be
emotional. She might perhaps cry with Sterne over a dead monk or a
dead donkey,--he has an equal allowance of tears for both,--but once
inside of a cave, her real desire is to get out again as quickly as
possible, with dry skirts and an unbroken neck. It may be, however,
that our degenerate modern impulses afford us no safe clue to those
halcyon days when sentiment was paramount and practical considerations
of little weight; when wet feet and sore throats were not suffered to
intrude their rueful warnings upon the majesty of nature; when ladies,
who lived comfortably and happily with the husbands of their choice,
poured forth impassioned prayers, in the Annual Register, for the boon
of indifference, and poets like Cowper rushed forward to remonstrate
with them for their cruelty.
“Let no low thought suggest the prayer,
Oh! grant, kind Heaven, to me,
Long as I draw ethereal air,
Sweet sensibility.”
wrote the author of The Task, in sober earnestness and sincerity.
“Then oh! ye Fair, if Pity’s ray
E’er taught your snowy breasts to sigh,
Shed o’er my contemplative lay
The tears of sensibility,”