LATER NOVELS.--GENERAL ESTIMATE.
Few of Miss Edgeworth's stories were written quickly. In her case,
however, the Horatian maxim was scarcely justified, for her best tales
are almost without exception those written with a running pen.
_Patronage_ was one that was longest in hand, having originated in 1787
from a story told by Mr. Edgeworth to amuse his wife when recovering
from her confinement. From her frequent mention of it, quite contrary to
her usual custom, one may conclude she did not find it an easy task. In
1811 she writes: "I am working away at _Patronage_, but cannot at all
come up to my idea of what it should be." We do not know whether it ever
did, but whatever her verdict may finally have been, it is certain that
_Patronage_, though one of the longest and most ambitious of her
stories, is as a story one of the least successful. It is labored; art
and design are too apparent; the purpose has too fatally hampered the
invention. There is no denying that, while containing many excellent
scenes, much shrewd observation of character, _Patronage_ drags, and the
reader is weary ere he has done. It is both artificial and common-place,
and what is more unfortunate still, the whole fabric is built upon a
confusion of premises. Its purpose is to demonstrate the evils that
result from patronage, and to show how much more successful are those
who rely only upon their own exertions. Both premises involve a _petitio
principii_. A capable person helped at the outset may have cause
eternally to bless the patron who enabled him to start at once in his
proper groove, instead of wasting strength and time after the
endeavor--often vain--to find it unassisted. Had she attempted to prove
that it was better for each person to fight his way alone, because this
was better for the moral development of his character, it would have
been another matter. But this is not the line she pursues. There are no
such subtle psychic problems worked out. The whole question is treated
from the surface only, and the two families chosen to "point the moral"
are not fairly contrasted. The Percys, the good people who shrink from
help so nervously that they would rather do themselves harm than accept
a helping hand, possess every virtue and capacity under the sun, while
their rivals and relatives, the Falconers, have no resources but those
of cringing falsehood. They are absolutely incapable, have learnt
nothing, do not care to learn, and depend entirely upon finding a
patron. They further rely upon their luck that, when settled in their
various posts, no untoward accident may reveal their inability to fill
them. Thus sound morality, good sense and an independent spirit are
contrasted with meanness, folly and ignorance. As an eminent critic has
well remarked: "The rival families are so unequal that they cannot be
handicapped for the race. The one has all the good qualities, the other
almost all the bad. Reverse the position; encumber the Percys (to borrow
a Johnsonian phrase) with any amount of help; leave the Falconers
entirely to their own resources; and the sole difference in the result
under any easily conceivable circumstances will be that the Percys will
rise more rapidly and the Falconers will never rise at all."
The materials of the fable, therefore, are not happy; neither, such as
they are, are they artfully managed. The working out is bald, the moral
bluntly enforced. Never was Miss Edgeworth more weighted by her aim,
never were the fallacies of her cut-and-dried theories better
illustrated. In this, her longest work, it is specially evident that her
manner was not adapted to what the French call _ouvrages de longue
haleine_. But if we at once dismiss from our minds the idea of deriving
instruction from the fable, if we judiciously skip the dull pages of
rhetoric or moral preachings that are interspersed, we can gain much
real enjoyment from this book, whose characters are excellently planned
and consistently carried out. _Patronage_ contains some of Miss
Edgeworth's finest creations. The Percys as a whole are
Too bright and good
For human nature's daily food;
but even in their family had grown up a character whom we can love, with
whom we can sympathize--the warm-hearted, generously impulsive,
sprightly Rosamond, who, according to her own testimony, resembled her
creator. Caroline Percy is one of the very wise, self-contained and
excellent young persons who so often appear under different disguises in
Miss Edgeworth's tales. She is exactly one of those heroines to whom
applies the wickedly witty remark put by Bulwer into the mouth of
Darrell in _What Will He Do with It?_ "Many years since I read Miss
Edgeworth's novels, and in conversing with Miss Honoria Vipont methinks
I confer with one of Miss Edgeworth's heroines--so rational, so prudent,
so well-behaved, so free from silly romantic notions, so replete with
solid information, moral philosophy and natural history; so sure to
regulate her watch and her heart to the precise moment, for the one to
strike and the other to throb, and to marry at last a respectable,
steady husband, whom she will win with dignity, and would love
with--decorum! a very superior girl indeed."[9]
There is also a certain family likeness in the good fathers of her
books. They are, as a rule, preternaturally wise, circumspect, and apt
to resemble Mr. Edgeworth. It has been well remarked that though we are
told that a just man sins seven times a day, Miss Edgeworth's just
heroes and heroines never fall. Undoubtedly there is a want of variety
as well as of human nature in her good characters, but not so in her
bad. There she ranges over so wide a field that we can but wonder whence
she gathered all this vast experience. She owned a perfect mine of
social satire, and the skill with which she drew upon it and shaped her
various characters, so as to give them a positive personal interest and
vitality, is astounding. She is equally happy in her villains, her
fools, her fops; indeed, in painting these latter species Miss Edgeworth
is unrivalled. She seemed to know every weakness and absurdity of which
human nature is capable. The manner in which she holds this up to view
is sometimes almost remorseless, as from the altitude of one who has
absolutely nothing in common with such creatures. In _Patronage_ we have
several such. Inimitable are the two Clays, brothers, men of large
fortunes, which they spend in all manner of extravagance and profligacy,
not from inclination, but merely to purchase admission into fine
company. They are known respectively as French and English Clay; the one
affecting a preference for all that is French; the other, a cold,
reserved, dull man, as affectedly denouncing everything foreign,
boasting loudly that everything about him is English, that only what is
English is worthy attention; "but whether this arises from love of his
country or contempt of his brother" does not appear. If there is
anything to choose between these two capital creations, English Clay is
perhaps the better. His slow, surly reserve, supercilious silence and
solemn self-importance are wonderfully sustained; but hardly less
excellent is his brother, with his affected tones, his foreign airs, and
quick, talkative vanity. Lord William is another remarkably well-drawn
picture. He is an upright, honorable and enlightened nobleman, who
constantly fails to do himself justice, because he labors under that
morbid shyness known as _mauvaise honte_, so common in England, so rare
out of her borders. The patron, Lord Oldborough, a high-minded, austere,
but absorbingly ambitious man, is elaborated with much care and
penetration. Very skillfully are we made to feel that his vices are
rather those of his position than of his heart. Nor must Buckhurst
Falconer be passed over, the only member of the Falconer family who has
one redeeming feature. He once had a heart, and, though weak as water,
and swayed by the low principles that prevail in his family, he cannot
succeed in stifling every good or noble feeling, though he has striven
hard to compass this end. These will crop forth occasionally, though
they cannot stay his descent down the path of corruption. But they
permit us to feel for him, to pity him; he is no cut-and-dried
mechanical knave.
A book that contains so many fine conceptions cannot be called a
failure, even to-day, and since Miss Edgeworth's contemporaries admitted
her premises, it is no wonder that on its appearance _Patronage_
achieved a great success. In those days, when novel-writing had not
become so much of an art as now, the rapid downfall of the whole
Falconer family within the space of a few weeks presented nothing
ludicrous. Such incidents were familiar in romance, and held allowable
there, even if known to be untrue to life. We now judge from the latter
standard only, and reject, even in fiction, the improbable. In
_Patronage_, Miss Edgeworth's fondness for poetical justice has
certainly carried her very far. Here, as in other of her stories,
difficulties are not allowed to develop and be overcome gradually, but
the knot is cut in the most ludicrously childish and awkward manner, a
summary catastrophe is imagined, so that the modern reader cannot
forbear a smile. Still, _Patronage_ remains a remarkable book, replete
with sound sense, acute observation and rapid graphic illustrations of
character.
Scarcely so _Harrington_. Here, as in _Patronage_, Miss Edgeworth had
set herself to work out a moral, this time an apology for Jews. It was
written to suggestion, and was on a theme that lay entirely outside the
domain of her experience. She had to evolve a Jew out of her moral
consciousness, and her delineation is as little successful as that of
other writers who have set themselves the same task. Her zeal outran her
judgment; her elaborate apology is feeble; and if the Jews needed
vindication they could hardly be flattered by one of this nature, for
she does not introduce us to a true Jew at all. Her ideas were based
upon that rare and beautiful character, Moses Mendelssohn, a character
as little typical of the Jewish as of any other race or religious creed,
but common to all men who think and feel philosophically and have raised
themselves above the petty prejudices of mankind. This was as much as to
say that only a Jew who was no Jew was admirable and estimable. And even
his daughter Berenice, whom we are led to regard throughout as a Jewess,
is finally discovered to have been born of a Christian mother and
christened in her youth, so that her lover, Harrington, can marry her
without any sacrifice to his social and racial prejudices. This is weak
indeed, since the whole purpose of the story was to overcome the
baseless dislike Harrington had from childhood entertained for the mere
name of Jew. It would, therefore, have been far more to the purpose had
his prejudices been really, and not apparently, overcome. The truth is
that Miss Edgeworth herself was a lady not free from prejudices; and a
regard for the opinion of the world, for birth and social station, was
one of these. At the eleventh hour she probably could not reconcile
herself to letting her hero, a man of good society, marry a Spanish
Jewess; and since he had shown himself willing to do so, carried away by
his deep and sincere feeling, she doubtless held that he had done
enough, and so terrible a fate must be averted from his head.
The story could not and did not satisfy Miss Mordecai's requirements,
though she accepted it as an attempt at making amends. But the authoress
herself recognized in later life that her friend "had no reason to be
satisfied with it, as the Jewess turns out to be a Christian. Yet she
was good enough to accept it as a peace-offering, and to consider that
this was an Irish blunder, which, with the best intentions, I could not
avoid."
Contemporary opinion certainly treated _Harrington_ as not one of the
happiest of their favorite novelist's stories. Yet with all its palpable
defects there is such an admixture of excellence that _Harrington_
should not be left unread, even though we may regret that such capital
figures, painted with such nice skill and delicate discrimination,
should be imbedded in so puerile a tale. The characters are keenly and
lightly drawn, standing out boldly and clearly. The jargon of society is
once more successfully reproduced, as well as those fashionable ladies
who hide the claws of a tigress under a velvet paw, and whose complex
and shifting nature Miss Edgeworth understood so well and reproduced so
faithfully. How she, with her simple, direct character, came to
comprehend them so fully, is almost a marvel. But intuition of character
was a forte with Miss Edgeworth and the grand secret of her novelistic
success. Her truth of touch was remarkable. Lady Anne Mowbray is a
perfect model of that mixture of feline grace and obstinate silliness
which the world so much admires in its young ladies; while her mother's
insignificance, which is not disguised by a stately, formal manner, is
delineated and sustained to perfection. Lord Mowbray is yet another of
Miss Edgeworth's marvelously acute portraits of a true man of the world,
of an evil nature. This is concealed by a fair semblance and good
manners, so that it is needful to know him well to guess at the villain
that is hidden under this attractive disguise.
Miss Edgeworth is at her ease and at her happiest in _Ormond_. Here she
is on Irish ground, always for her the best, where she moves with most
_abandon_; where she casts aside for a time some of her cold philosophy,
and allows herself to appear as the vivacious Irishwoman, which at heart
she was. Ireland, with its long history of bloodshed and social
disorder, had none of those romantic incidents to offer to the novelist
that were to be found in the equally wild but more noble and chivalric
history of Scotland. Hence Sir Walter Scott had an easier task to
perform than Miss Edgeworth. The history of which he treated allowed of
judicious and poetic gilding. It lifted into more romantic regions.
Irish history has, unfortunately, never been elevating, soul-ennobling.
It is too much the record of rebellious seditions and foolish intrigues,
lightly entered upon, inconsistently carried out. Such a history could
scarcely kindle romantic ideas and desires in the hearts of youth, as
did Scott's pictures; and Miss Edgeworth did wisely in her Irish tales
to leave history carefully on one side, and to deal only with the
Hibernian character and the delineation of social manners. For many
years the mere name of Irishman had been regarded in England as a term
of reproach, and they figured as buffoons in all the novels and plays of
the period. It was Miss Edgeworth who first came to the rescue of her
countrymen, and she did this by no exaggerated praises, but by
sympathetic yet true presentment. Her national story of _Castle
Rackrent_ had established for her a reputation as a relentlessly
truthful writer. She had invested the tale with none of the poetical
glamor employed by most historical novelists, who seek to hide from
sight the ugly sores that exist in the society they depict, and thus
endeavor to make us deem that those good old times of which they write
had, despite their lawlessness, some power and strength of goodness
unknown to us. Miss Edgeworth was too realistic a portrait painter to
employ such methods; hence, where Sir Walter Scott's rich imagination
led him at times astray, she, on her part, was often hampered for want
of that faculty. Still, her very reserve was fortunate, considering the
theme on which it was exercised, as matters Irish have for some cause
never been treated with judicial calmness. Hence to no writer are the
Irish so much indebted. Their less judicious friends were satisfied with
indignantly repelling the charges made against them, while national
partiality magnified all their gifts. Miss Edgeworth felt with them,
loved them, but she was not blinded by her affection. Starting from the
assumption that the prejudices which existed against her countrymen
arose from imperfect acquaintance with them, she candidly presented them
just as they were, with both their virtues and vices unvarnished.
After _Castle Rackrent_, _Ormond_ was certainly the finest effort of
Miss Edgeworth's genius, and it is scarcely fanciful to believe that it
owes some of its excellence to the influence exerted upon her mind by
_Waverley_. Had she but had Scott's eye for nature, and introduced us
to some of the beautiful scenery in which her story occurs, the book
might worthily rank beside any of the Scotch Waverley novels. Was it
owing to Scott's influence, also, that we have in this case a less
obtrusive moral?
The story of _Ormond_ is in some respects the reverse of _Vivian_. The
hero possesses innate force of character, and we watch in his career the
progress of a mind that has not been cultivated, but shows itself
capable of being educated by circumstances. Ormond is one of those
persons in whom native intuition takes the place of instruction, and who
of their proper strength are equal to all emergencies. The complications
of the story arise from these inward propensities of his nature and the
contending influences from without with which he has to grapple. He was
an orphan who had been adopted by Sir Ulick O'Shane, but had not been
educated, because Sir Ulick deemed that there was no use giving him the
education of a landed gentleman when he was not likely to have an
estate. An unfortunate difference with Sir Ulick's wife obliged Ormond
to leave his guardian's roof and avail himself of the hospitality of a
cousin, Cornelius O'Shane, who called himself King of the Black Islands,
after his estate. More familiarly this original is spoken of as King
Corny. Besides being one of the most delightful creations in romantic
literature, he is an instructive study towards the comprehension of the
Irish character. Macaulay pointed out, in speaking of the aboriginal
aristocracy of Ireland, that Miss Edgeworth's King Corny belonged to a
later and much more civilized generation, but added that "whoever has
studied that admirable portrait can form some notion of what King
Corny's great-grandfather must have been like." King Corny is a most
genuine character; there is no nonsense, no false reticence about him;
he is hasty and violent at times, but he is not ashamed to show it,
neither does he hide his warm, kind heart. His frank and unsuspecting
nature makes him adored by all his tenantry, none of whom would wrong
their king. There is not a page in which he figures that does not
furnish charming reading, and there is not a reader but will resent that
King Corny is made to die so early in the book. It is all the more
vexatious to have the most original and attractive figure thus removed,
because it was needless for the due development of the story. That the
interest, which certainly flags after his demise, is sustained at all is
a proof that the story, as a story, is above Miss Edgeworth's average.
And indeed, attention is well maintained to the end, notwithstanding a
few most marvelously unnatural incidents that occur in the latter
portion and stagger belief. They once more reveal Miss Edgeworth's
curious clumsiness in getting her brain-children out of the difficulties
in which she has involved them. The quick alternation of laughter and
tears that is a marked feature of her Irish tales recurs in the earlier
portions of the book, where the scene is laid in the Black Islands, of
which Harry Ormond becomes "prince presumptive." The famous postilion's
letter in the _Absentee_ is hard run by the letter King Corny writes to
Ormond when offering him his hospitality. Admirable, too, is the account
of his reception by the single-hearted, generous, though eccentric
monarch. This reception scene is characteristic of the primitive and
somewhat dissolute manners of the time. Indeed, the whole of Harry
Ormond's residence in the Black Islands affords Miss Edgeworth
opportunities for exercising her peculiar felicity in displaying manners
and customs. She does not present these by merely a few prominent and
striking traits, but with delicate skill she insinuates little touches
here and there that give local color and perfume to the whole. It is
quite true that Miss Edgeworth's books bear reading twice; once for the
general impression, the second time to see how cunningly this
impression is produced.
Miss Edgeworth not having in the case of _Ormond_ weighted herself with
a text, we have hardly any of her "unco' gude" characters, but many of
those mixtures that are truer to poor humanity. The exceptions are Lady
and Miss Annaly, some of her monotonously similar pattern women, and Dr.
Cambray, one of her dull and wooden immaculate men. Happily they appear
but little in the story. The most able character, after King Corny, is
Sir Ulick O'Shane, the political schemer and trimmer. A more vulgar or
common-place writer would have represented him as an offensive
hypocrite. Miss Edgeworth does not paint him in repellent colors, but
lets him reveal his baseness little by little, and rather against his
will, until the final catastrophe presents him in all his native
vileness. His easy and agreeable social manners, his gentlemanly mode of
feeling and acting, due, no doubt, to a long inheritance of gentlemanly
traditions, are shown with profound penetration. It is a part of Miss
Edgeworth's power to evince how "great effects from trivial causes
spring;" she makes us vividly realize all the circumstances under which
her events occur. Thus we witness their development, instead of being
only presented with the final results. This was rather a new departure
in her day, when events finished, cut and dried, were alone considered
worthy of note. In her conversations she shows considerable dramatic
skill: they are enlivened not only by looks and gestures, but by what is
often as significant, by moments of silence, by changes of countenance,
by all the minor matters that distinguish spoken from written words.
Neither in dramatic presentation of incident, nor in picturesqueness and
vividness of character-drawing, has Miss Edgeworth ever touched a higher
standard than in _Ormond_. The fact that it was written and sent to
press so quickly, in order to gratify her sick father, proved in its
favor. The result was that it was penned with more spontaneity, was less
carefully worked up than either _Patronage_ or _Belinda_, or even the
_Absentee_, and consequently it reads more natural. There are fewer
forced sentences, fewer attempts at pointed and epigrammatic writing.
These epigrammatic sentences, which, with but few exceptions, are but
half epigrams, are somewhat aggravating, especially if too constantly
repeated, since they thus picture neither common nor uncommon talk. It
is this tendency, carried to its highest expression in the _Modern
Griselda_, that makes Miss Edgeworth's personages, while acting and
thinking like real people, not always talk as men and women would. As a
rule, however, her style is easy, finished, flexible, and at times racy,
and while seldom rising to eloquence, never sinking to tameness. Now and
then it is a trifle cold, and she is too fond of erudite or far-fetched
illustrations. The conversation of her day was, to use the language of
the day, "polite;" that is to say, slightly stilted, prim, and confined
within narrow bounds, and that she reflected it is a matter of course,
but, as a whole, she managed to keep herself singularly free from its
worst features. Indeed, her work was really of first-rate quality, and
if we read it without troubling ourselves about her ethical designs or
expecting to find a cleverly-told plot, we cannot fail to derive
enjoyment from it, or to comprehend why her contemporaries rated her so
highly, though they, on their part, perhaps, valued her moral teaching
more than the present generation, which does not believe in mere sermons
as panaceas. Indeed, now-a-days, the fashion is too much to divorce art
from didactic intention. In those days it was the fashion to over-rate
the service works of imagination can render virtue.
It would be easy to bring forward testimony regarding the fervent
admiration bestowed on Miss Edgeworth by her contemporaries. She
certainly missed, but she only just missed, the highest greatness. Did
Madame de Stael put her sure finger on the cause when she said, after
reading _Fashionable Tales_ and expressing her great admiration, "_Que
Miss Edgeworth etait digne de l'enthousiasme, mais qu'elle s'est perdue
dans la triste utilite?_" Yet to preach utility was held by Miss
Edgeworth as a duty; but for this she might perhaps never have written
at all, since no pecuniary needs drove her to authorship. And allowing
for this moral strain in her works, and the blemishes that result
thence, which compared with all she achieved are but trivial, in
estimating her work as a whole, we may well afford to change what
Chateaubriand called "the petty and meagre criticism of defects for the
comprehensive and prolific criticism of beauties." We must not look for
features such as she cannot furnish, any more than we should seek for
figs upon an apple-tree. There are certain things Miss Edgeworth can do,
and do inimitably; there are others entirely foreign to her sphere. Her
novels have been described as a sort of essence of common sense, and
even more happily it has been said that it was her genius to be wise. We
must be content to take that which she can offer; and since she offers
so much, why should we not be content? Miss Edgeworth wrote of ordinary
human life, and not of tremendous catastrophes or highly romantic
incidents. Hers was no heated fancy. She had no comprehension of those
fiery passions, those sensibilities that burn like tinder at contact
with the feeblest spark; she does not believe in chance, that favorite
of so many novelists; neither does she deal in ruined castles,
underground galleries nor spectres, as was the fashion in her day. In
her stories events mostly occur as in sober and habitual fact. In
avoiding the stock-in-trade of her contemporaries she boldly struck out
a line of her own which answers in some respects to the modern realistic
novel, though devoid, of course, of its anatomical and physiological
character. She used materials which her predecessors had scorned as
worthless. She endeavored to show that there is a poetry in
self-restraint as well as in passion, though at the very time she wrote
it was the fashion to sneer at this, and to laud as fine that
self-forgetfulness, that trampling down of all obstacles, no matter of
what nature, sung by Byron and Shelley. She permitted just that amount
of tenderness which the owner could keep under due control. She had no
taste for what was named the grandeur, beauty and mystery of crime. She
seldom devoted her attention to crimes at all, but gave it to those
minor virtues and vices that contribute more largely to our daily
sufferings or enjoyments. The novels of her day were too apt to bring
forward angels or monsters, and though she also erred at times in the
former respect, yet on the whole she departed from it, and was among the
first to strike out that path since so successfully trodden, especially
by female novelists, and notably by George Eliot--that of interesting us
in persons moving in the common walks of men. In her _Popular_ and
_Moral Tales_ she was encumbered like a clergyman in his sermon, and
hence a too solemn and rather stifling air of moral reflection is apt to
pervade. That she overcame it as much as she did, that her novels are as
attractive and readable as they are, is to the credit of her genius,
which not even Mr. Edgeworth could wholly overlay and stifle, and she
thus with few exceptions triumphed over that tendency to the "goody,"
from which it seems so difficult for works intended for edification to
keep themselves exempt. Next to her children's and Irish tales she is
most excellent in her studies from fashionable life. Her heroes and
heroines moving in the dismal round of inanities, miscalled diversions,
are portraits touched up with nice care in detail, with a keen eye for
subtleties and demi-tints. She loved to expose the false and mawkish
doctrines thought fit for women. Her fashionable heroines followed the
sentimental teachings of Rousseau and Mrs. Chapone, and held that the
highest mission of woman is to please, and that she should be not only
excused but commended if she employed every art to compass that end.
High-mindedness was a factor unknown or at least unadmitted in their
philosophy; fashion governed all; to be in the fashion was the main
object of their lives. Miss Edgeworth did not condemn this too
mercilessly or from too lofty a platform. Her morality, though
unexceptionable, is never austere; she allows and even sanctions worldly
wisdom within certain limits; she was too much a woman of the world
herself to set up Utopian or ascetic standards. To make conscience agree
with the demands of polite opinion was admitted to be a desirable and
important factor. After all, we are all more or less affected by the
mental atmosphere in which we live; none of us can wholly get outside
the spiritual air that environs us, and see things from different points
of view; and Miss Edgeworth could do so less than many, because she was
less highly endowed with sympathetic imagination. Thus her shortcomings
are, in her case, more than in that of many others, the fault of her
surroundings and education. For, placed immediately under Mr.
Edgeworth's personal influence, his powers of suasion and plausible
presentment, it was not easy to escape, and his daughter never
questioned his final wisdom or desired such escape. In a critical
reading of her books it is amusing to note how ever and again her father
crops forth. Thus her heroes constantly ask what manner of education the
young lady of their choice has received, because as "prudent men" they
feel that only on this can they base their future hopes of happiness.
And yet, strangely enough, with this absolute faith in the power of
education is combined a belief that nothing, not even this almighty
thing, can overcome the fact that if a girl be the daughter of a woman
who has at any time forgotten herself, no matter how good the education
may have been, no matter that this parent may have died at her birth or
the child never lived beside her, Miss Edgeworth's heroes regard her as
necessarily lost--consider that it is impossible she should continue in
the straight path. They will stifle their strongest feelings; make
themselves and the girl miserable rather than marry her. A special
instance of this occurs in the _Absentee_, where Lord Colambre prefers
to break off his engagement with his adored cousin, the charming and
high-spirited Grace Nugent, rather than wed her after he hears a rumor
that her mother has not been legally married to her father. Hence a
_deus ex machina_ has to be evoked, who, like all such gods, cuts the
Gordian knot in bungling fashion. After attributing all possibilities to
education, there is quite a comic inconsistency in this method of
visiting the offenses of the wrong-doer upon the victim. But Miss
Edgeworth, or rather her father, appeared to have no comprehension of
the fact that misfortunes of birth most frequently act on the children
as a deterrent; so that they make, as it were, hereditary expiation. But
here appears the want of tenderness in Miss Edgeworth's work--a quantity
she owned as a woman and lacked as an author. The two were certainly
curiously different at times. But though not tender, she is always
amiable and kindly, even though she does not look far beneath the
surface and never deals with the soul. Unknown to her were its silent
tragedies, its conflicts, hopes and fears. Those feelings that did not
manifest themselves in life or action were beyond her range of
comprehension. She had a genius for observing such things as can be
observed; the lower depths are never stirred by herself or her
characters. But it was her genius for observation, her power for
reproducing what she had seen, that made her greatness--a greatness
limited in its extent, but none the less greatness of its kind. Her
works fully merit the admiration they have so long enjoyed.
An amusing summing-up of Miss Edgeworth's novels is given by Leigh Hunt
in his poem, _Blue Stocking Revels_. Apollo gives a ball to all the
eminent contemporary authoresses, and criticises his guests as they
enter.
At the sight of Miss Edgeworth he says:
"Here comes one
As sincere and kind as lives under the sun;
Not poetical, eh? nor much given to insist
On utilities not in utility's list.
(Things nevertheless without which the large heart
Of my world would but play a poor husk of a part.)
But most truly within her own sphere sympathetic,
And that's no mean help towards the practic-poetic."
Then smiling, he said a most singular thing--
He thanked her for making him "saving of string!"
But for fear she should fancy he did not approve her in
Matters more weighty, praised her _Manoeuvring_.
A book which, if aught could pierce craniums so dense,
Might supply cunning folks with a little good sense.
"And her Irish" (he added), "poor souls! so impressed him,
He knew not if most they amused or distressed him."
And now finally we are confronted with the question, will Miss
Edgeworth's works live, or will they be left to grow dusty upon the
library-shelves, in company with many names much respected in their
day? Who shall say? The novel is, of its very essence, the most
ephemeral style of literature, since it deals with the ever-shifting
pictures of its time. Nor is this unjust. The novelist of worth
receives, as a rule, his meed of recognition in his life-time, which is
not the lot of writers in all branches of literature. On the other hand,
to the student of manners, novels have a value no historian can outvie,
and on this account alone Miss Edgeworth's should not be left unread.
But not only on this account, for it is perhaps just in this direction
that they err somewhat; for though no doubt true pictures of one section
of society, there is no denying that Miss Edgeworth's outlook is not
catholic; that the world, as she saw it, was prescribed almost
exclusively within the bounds of so-called "good society"--a circle in
which the heights and depths of life and feeling are rarely touched,
because of the conventional boundaries within which its inmates are
cooped.
Whence, then, the undeniable fact that Miss Edgeworth has gradually
grown to join that band of authors known as standard, who are more
spoken of than read? There is so much in her mode of life-conception
that is entirely modern, so much that is in keeping rather with the
advanced school of utilitarian ethicists than with the more sentimental
school of her day, that it certainly does appear puzzling why she has
not better maintained her place; for it would be idle to pretend that
she has maintained it such as it was in her life-time. It cannot be
because her plots are ill-constructed. When at her best she holds
attention notwithstanding. Nor does an author's power to engross us at
all depend on his constructive faculty. Indeed, some of those writers
who most hold their readers have distinctly lacked this gift, which
often exists independently of fine novelistic qualities. In portions of
her work Miss Edgeworth need fear no rivals. Why is it, then, that in
attempting an estimate of her powers, while allowing to her first-class
excellences, we have to deny her a first-class place, thus condoning, to
some extent, those who leave her unread to turn to less edifying and
admirable writers? Is it not because there is absent from Maria
Edgeworth's writings that divine spark of the ideal that alone allows
works to live for all time--that spark which it is given to many an
inferior author to own, while it is here denied to a woman of great
intellectual power? While preeminently upright, high-principled and
virtuous, Miss Edgeworth's ethics are pervaded by a certain coldness
and self-consciousness that irresistibly give to her good people a
pharisaical character; an impression from which it is always difficult
and at times impossible for the reader to shake himself free. Her heroes
and heroines act with too little spontaneity; they seem to calculate and
know too surely the exact sum total of ultimate gain that will, in a
justly-ordered world, accrue to them for their good actions, their
self-sacrifice and devotion. Her heroes are almost as calculating as her
villains.
It is a severe test to which to put an author, to read all his works
consecutively; but it is one that more surely than aught else enables us
to mark his place of merit. If he can stand this trial he is decidedly
above the average; if he issue thence triumphant he may without
hesitation be pronounced among the great. Miss Edgeworth weathers this
test very respectably; indeed it, more than all else, enforces upon the
reader the great versatility she displays in character and situation.
Yet it is just after such a perusal that the absolute lack of the ideal
element is so strongly borne in upon us. As the thirsty mountaineer
drinks eagerly from the first clear streamlet that meets him trickling
down from the heights, so Miss Edgeworth's readers eagerly turn from her
to some more spontaneous writer to quench the drought that this
continuous perusal has engendered. Even in this prosaic and
materialistic age the belief in blue roses is happily not wholly dead;
and though we will not suffer the garden of a novelist to grow no other
plant, because we know that one filled with blue roses only is out of
nature in this terrestrial globe, yet, in a well-ordered parterre, we do
require that the blue rose should also have its place. It is to novelist
and poet that the cultivation of this rare and heaven-born plant has
been entrusted. Miss Edgeworth knew it not. Neither by hereditary
tendency nor by training had she made acquaintance with this
wonder-flower, for whose botanical analysis Mr. Edgeworth would have
searched a Flora in vain, and whose existence he would therefore stoutly
have denied.
With "little stores of maxims," like Tennyson's faithless love, Miss
Edgeworth, acting from the very highest motives, after careful and
philosophic deliberation, at personal suffering to herself, in her
printed words, preached down the instincts of the heart. She knew not
that excellent as utilitarianism is in its place and sphere, there is
something more, something beyond, that is needed to form the basis upon
which human actions are set in motion. For the spiritual and divine
element in man she made no allowance, and it was this that drew down on
her, from shallow contemporary critics, that condemnation of want of
religion, flung in a narrow, dogmatic spirit, that wounded her so
deeply. Outwardly the Edgeworths conformed to the established faith, and
though liberal in the sense of being wide-minded, they were not in
religious matters advanced in thought. Indeed, they thought little, if
at all, of the next world, finding full occupation for their minds in
this. Miss Edgeworth was hemmed in by the visible; she did not seek to
justify the ways of God to man; life was to her no riddle; if man would
but act rightly, all would be well; she deemed that it is given into his
own hands to do good or evil, to be happy or the reverse. There was in
her nothing of the poet and the seer; and by so much as she fails to
speak to humanity in all its aspects, by so much she fails to take rank
among the greatest teachers of our race. But with wisdom and good sense
she recognized her limitations; she set herself a humbler but no less
useful task; she carried out her aim faithfully and conscientiously, and
by so much she too must be ranked among the good and faithful servants
who do the work appointed by their Lord. And after all, is not the
harmony of humanity best served by the free emission of the most diverse
notes? Miss Edgeworth set herself to preach utilitarianism and the
minor virtues. She succeeded; and in so far as she succeeded in that
which she set herself to do, life was for her successful, and she was
great.