Madame,--If to the enjoyments of your present state be lacking a view
of the minor infirmities or foibles of men, I cannot but think (were the
thought permitted) that your pleasures are yet incomplete. Moreover, it
is certain that a woman of parts who has once meddled with literature
will never wholly lose her love for the discussion of that delicious
topic, nor cease to relish what (in the cant of our new age) is styled
'literary shop.' For these reasons I attempt to convey to you some
inkling of the present state of that agreeable art which you, madam,
raised to its highest pitch of perfection.
As to your own works (immortal, as I believe), I have but little that
is wholly cheering to tell one who, among women of letters, was almost
alone in her freedom from a lettered vanity. You are not a very popular
author: your volumes are not found in gaudy covers on every bookstall;
or, if found, are not perused with avidity by the Emmas and Catherines
of our generation. 'Tis not long since a blow was dealt (in the
estimation of the unreasoning) at your character as an author by the
publication of your familiar letters. The editor of these epistles,
unfortunately, did not always take your witticisms, and he added
others which were too unmistakably his own. While the injudicious were
disappointed by the absence of your exquisite style and humour, the
wiser sort were the more convinced of your wisdom. In your letters
(knowing your correspondents) you gave but the small personal talk of
the hour, for them sufficient; for your books you reserved matter and
expression which are imperishable. Your admirers, if not very numerous,
include all persons of taste, who, in your favour, are apt somewhat to
abate the rule, or shake off the habit, which commonly confines them to
but temperate laudation.
'T is the fault of all art to seem antiquated and faded in the eyes of
the succeeding generation. The manners of your age were not the manners
of to-day, and young gentlemen and ladies who think Scott 'slow,' think
Miss Austen 'prim' and 'dreary.' Yet, even could you return among us, I
scarcely believe that, speaking the language of the hour, as you might,
and versed in its habits, you would win the general admiration. For how
tame, madam, are your characters, especially your favourite heroines!
how limited the life which you knew and described! how narrow the range
of your incidents! how correct your grammar!
As heroines, for example, you chose ladies like Emma, and Elizabeth,
and Catherine: women remarkable neither for the brilliance nor for
the degradation of their birth; women wrapped up in their own and the
parish's concerns, ignorant of evil, as it seems, and unacquainted with
vain yearnings and interesting doubts. Who can engage his fancy with
their match-makings and the conduct of their affections, when so many
daring and dazzling heroines approach and solicit his regard?
Here are princesses dressed in white velvet stamped with golden
fleurs-de-lys--ladies with hearts of ice and lips of fire, who count
their roubles by the million, their lovers by the score, and even their
husbands, very often, in figures of some arithmetical importance. With
these are the immaculate daughters of itinerant Italian musicians, maids
whose souls are unsoiled amidst the contaminations of our streets, and
whose acquaintance with the art of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Daedalus
and Scopas, is the more admirable, because entirely derived from loving
study of the inexpensive collections vended by the plaster-of-Paris man
round the corner. When such heroines are wooed by the nephews of Dukes,
where are your Emmas and Elizabeths? Your volumes neither excite nor
satisfy the curiosities provoked by that modern and scientific fiction,
which is greatly admired, I learn, in the United States, as well as in
France and at home.
You erred, it cannot be denied, with your eyes open. Knowing Lydia
and Kitty so intimately as you did, why did you make of them almost
insignificant characters? With Lydia for a heroine you might have gone
far; and, had you devoted three volumes, and the chief of your time, to
the passions of Kitty, you might have held your own, even now, in the
circulating library. How Lyddy, perched on a corner of the roof, first
beheld her Wickham; how, on her challenge, he climbed up by a ladder to
her side; how they kissed, caressed, swung on gates together, met at odd
seasons, in strange places, and finally eloped: all this might have been
put in the mouth of a jealous elder sister, say Elizabeth, and you would
not have been less popular than several favourites of our time. Had you
cast the whole narrative into the present tense, and lingered lovingly
over the thickness of Mary's legs and the softness of Kitty's cheeks,
and the blonde fluffiness of Wickham's whiskers, you would have left a
romance still dear to young ladies.
Or again, you might entrance your students still, had you concentrated
your attention on Mrs. Rushworth, who eloped with Henrv Crawford. These
should have been the chief figures of 'Mansfield Park.' But you timidly
decline to tackle Passion. 'Let other pens,' you write, 'dwell on guilt
and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can.' Ah, _there_
is the secret of your failure! Need I add that the vulgarity and
narrowness of the social circles you describe impair your popularity? I
scarce remember more than one lady of title, and but very few lords (and
these unessential) in all your tales. Now, when we all wish to be in
society, we demand plenty of titles in our novels, at any rate, and we
get lords (and very queer lords) even from Republican authors, born in
a country which in your time was not renowned for its literature. I have
heard a critic remark, with a decided air of fashion, on the brevity
of the notice which your characters give each other when they
offer invitations to dinner. 'An invitation to dinner next day was
despatched,' and this demonstrates that your acquaintance 'went out'
very little, and had but few engagements. How vulgar, too, is one
of your heroines, who bids Mr. Darcy 'keep his breath to cool his
porridge.' I blush for Elizabeth! It were superfluous to add that your
characters are debased by being invariably mere members of the Church of
England as by law established. The Dissenting enthusiast, the open soul
that glides from Esoteric Buddhism to the Salvation Army, and from the
Higher Pantheism to the Higher Paganism, we look for in vain among your
studies of character. Nay, the very words I employ are of unknown sound
to you; so how can you help us in the stress of the soul's travailings?
You may say that the soul's travailings are no affair of yours; proving
thereby that you have indeed but a lowly conception of the duty of the
novelist. I only remember one reference, in all your works, to that
controversy which occupies the chief of our attention--the great
controversy on Creation or Evolution. Your Jane Bennet cries: 'I have
no idea of there being so much Design in the world as some persons
imagine.' Nor do you touch on our mighty social question, the Land Laws,
save when Mrs. Bennet appears as a Land Reformer, and rails bitterly
against the cruelty 'of settling an estate away from a family of five
daughters, in favour of a man whom nobody cared anything about.' There,
madam, in that cruelly unjust performance, what a text you had for a
_Tendenz-Roman_. Nay, you can allow Kitty to report that a Private had
been flogged, without introducing a chapter on Flogging in the Army. But
you formally declined to stretch your matter out, here and there, 'with
solemn specious nonsense about something unconnected with the story.'
No 'padding' for Miss Austen! In fact, madam, as you were born before
Analysis came in, or Passion, or Realism, or Naturalism, or Irreverence,
or Religious Open-mindedness, you really cannot hope to rival your
literary sisters in the minds of a perplexed generation. Your heroines
are not passionate, we do not see their red wet cheeks, and tresses
dishevelled in the manner of our frank young Maenads. What says your
best successor, a lady who adds fresh lustre to a name that in fiction
equals yours? She says of Miss Austen: 'Her heroines have a stamp of
their own. They have a _certain gentle self-respect and humour and
hardness of heart_... Love with them does not mean a passion as much as
an interest, deep and silent.' I think one prefers them so, and that
Englishwomen should be more like Anne Elliot than Maggie Tulliver. 'All
the privilege I claim for my own sex is that of loving longest when
existence or when hope is gone,' said Anne; perhaps she insisted on a
monopoly that neither sex has all to itself. Ah, madam, what a relief it
is to come back to your witty volumes, and forget the follies of to-day
in those of Mr. Collins and of Mrs. Bennet! How fine, nay, how noble is
your art in its delicate reserve, never insisting, never forcing the
note, never pushing the sketch into the caricature! You worked without
thinking of it, in the spirit of Greece, on a labour happily limited,
and exquisitely organised. 'Dear books,' we say, with Miss
Thackeray--'dear books, bright, sparkling with wit and animation, in
which the homely heroines charm, the dull hours fly, and the very bores
are enchanting.'