on account of preciosity. “Another fault I find, too, in the
style--’tis affected. _Ambitioned_ is a great word with him, and
_ignore_; _my concern_, or _of great concern_ is, it seems, properer
than _concernment_?” She expects Temple, nevertheless, to fit her
up with the newest town-phrases. “Pray what is meant by _wellness_
and _unwellness_; and why is _to some extreme_ better than _to some
extremity_?” She has her own ideas about style. “All letters, methinks,
should be free and easy as one’s discourse; not studied as an oration,
nor made up of hard words like a charm.” Then she pillories “a
gentleman I knew, who would never say ‘the weather grew cold,’ but that
‘winter began to salute us.’” She had “no patience with such coxcombs.”
A jolly word of her own is “pleasinger.” I have not met it anywhere
else. “’Twill be pleasinger to you, I am sure, to tell you how fond I
am of your lock.” His “lock” was a lock of hair which he had sent her
on demand before he went to Ireland. For a moment it charmed her out
of her reserve. “Cut no more on’t, I would not have it spoiled for
the world. If you love me be careful on’t.” For once she lets herself
go. “I would not have the rule absolutely true without exceptions
that hard hairs are ill-natured, for then I should be so. But I can
allow that soft hairs are good, and so are you, or I am deceived as
much as you are if you think I do not love you enough. Tell me, my
dearest, am I? You will not be if you think I am yours.” That charming
little outbreak, written _à bride abattue_, concludes a letter which
begins, as all of them do, with the formal “Sir.” In its complete
unaffectedness and spontaneity it is not far behind _Notre Dame des
Rochers_.
To return to Dorothy’s reading, I do not know that, country for
country, she was far behind her contemporary. Novel apart, she is
reading the travels of Mendez Pinto, quotes the action, not the words,
of Shakespeare’s _Richard III_, has Spanish proverbs at command, writes
a note in French, takes a part in _The Lost Lady_, knows Cowley’s
poems, and was a “devote” of Dr. Jeremy Taylor. From that goodly divine
she takes a long argument upon resignation of the will, nearly word for
word, and holds it up for Temple’s admiration. She is more reticent
about her religious opinions than Madame was, having to deal with a
lover suspected of being something of a Gallic instead of a daughter
adept in Descartes. If she was primed with Jeremy Taylor she was in a
good way. Yet I don’t know what that doctor would have said to this:
“We complain of this world,” she says, “and the variety of crosses
and afflictions it abounds in, and for all this, who is weary on’t
(more than in discourse), who thinks with pleasure of leaving it, or
preparing for the next? We see old folks that have outlived all the
comforts of life, desire to continue it, and nothing can wean us from
the folly of preferring a mortal being, subject to great infirmity and
unavoidable decays, before an immortal one, and all the glories that
are promised with it.”
“Is not this very like preaching?” she asks. It is less like the
preaching of the author of _Holy Dying_ than that of six-and-twenty
in love; but undoubtedly it proceeds from common experience. She was
merciless to bad sermons, able to make such good ones of her own. “God
forgive me, I was as near laughing yesterday where I should not. Would
you believe that I had the grace to go hear a sermon upon a week-day?”
Stephen Marshall was the preacher, a roaring divine of the prevailing
type. “He is so famed that I expected rare things of him, and seriously
I listened to him at first with as much reverence as if he had been
St. Paul; and what do you think he told us? Why, that if there were no
Kings, no Queens, no lords, no ladies, nor gentlemen, nor gentlewomen
in the world, ’twould be no loss at all to God Almighty. This we had
over some forty times, which made me remember it whether I would or
not.... Yet, I’ll say for him, he stood stoutly for tithes, though, in
my opinion, few deserved them less than he; and it may be he would be
better without them.” Marshall should have known better than to try his
levelling doctrine at Chicksands.
To the making of all good letter-writers, all those to whom it is a
natural vent for the emotions, goes quality, that which we call style,
an entire naturalness of expression turned in a manner of one’s own,
an incommunicable something not to be mistaken. All the best have
it; the second-best have something of it. Into literary quality goes,
of course, moral quality, _l’homme même_. Now, Dorothy Osborne has
quality: little as we have, there is enough to show that. She can
be playful, but not sparkle, not ripple like the Marquise nor set a
whole letter twinkling like the sea in a fresh wind; hers is a still
wind. Nor has she such news to impart, to be “le dessus de touts ses
panniers.” Chicksands was not Paris. She has spirit, but not gallantry.
Madame de Sévigné’s chosen defence was always attack. Dorothy is as
quick to see her advantage, but has a more staid manner of execution.
She will be slower to believe herself menaced; and when she discovers
it will reason plainly with the offender, as much for his good as for
her justification. Take this for an example. Temple, who was a fussy
man, a precisian, had been scolding her for fruit-eating. You could
hardly expect a lady to approve lectures upon her digestion from her
lover. She replied:
“In my opinion you do not understand the laws of friendship aright.
’Tis generally believed it owes its birth to an agreement and
conformity of humours, and that it lives no longer than ’tis preserved
by the mutual care of those that bred it.” Is there no style in that?
“’Tis wholly governed by equality, and can there be such a thing in
it as distinction of power? No, sure, if we are friends we must both
command and both obey alike; indeed, a mistress and a servant sounds
otherwise; but that is ceremony and this is truth. Yet what reason had
I to furnish you with a stick to beat myself withal, or desire that
you should command, that do it so severely?” Observe her conduct of the
relative there! “I must eat fruit no longer than I could be content you
should be in a fever; is not that an absolute forbidding of me? It has
frighted me just now from a basket of the most tempting cherries that
e’er I saw, though I know you did not mean that I should eat none. But
if you had I think I should have obeyed you.”
Evidently she had tossed her head over his dictation; but how well in
hand is her temper, how admirable her style! It is very much in the
manner of Madame when her querulous daughter had hurt her feelings; and
entirely in that manner Madame would throw up the sponge at the end
of a successful attack--entirely as Dorothy does here, with her, “If
you had I think I should have obeyed you.” Dorothy is not, however, so
quick to veer from the stormy to the rainy quarter. She can be fierce,
as I have shown, when her feelings are overstrained, but there is no
hysterical passion. Modesty forbade. “Love is a terrible word,” she
says, “and I should blush to death if anything but a letter accused me
on’t.” She could be bold on such occasions; she could be as saucy as
Rosalind, and as tender. When it is a case of his going to Ireland, on
business of his father’s, which may advance their personal affair, she
urges him to be off. But when the hour has come--“You must give Nan
leave to cut off a lock of your hair for me.... Oh, my heart! What a
sigh was there! I will not tell you how many this journey causes, nor
the fears and apprehensions I have for you. No, I long to be rid of
you--am afraid you will not go soon enough. Do not you believe this?
No, my dearest, I know you do not, whate’er you say....” Any good girl
in love would feel like that, but not everyone could let you hear the
quickened breath in a letter three hundred years old.
Sévigné was wise, and so is Dorothy. She read and could criticise,
she read and remembered. With less philosophy, and no fatalism, she
looked her world in the face, and had no illusions about it. But she
was in love, and it was a good world. Cheerfulness kept breaking in.
“What an age we live in, where ’tis a miracle if in ten couples that
are married, two of them live so as not to publish to the world that
they cannot agree.” Yet she thinks that one should follow the Saviour’s
precept, take up the cross and follow. She believes that the trouble is
mostly of the woman’s making, for as for the husband, if he grumbles,
and the wife says nothing, he will stop for lack of nutriment, and
nobody be any the worse. A splenetic husband of her acquaintance had
the trick, when harassed, of rising in the night and banging the table
with a club. His wife provided a stout cushion for the table, and was
not disturbed.
Sévigné is merry, and so is Dorothy, though much more demure. In her
seventy letters you will find no _tours de force_--nothing like the
“prairie” letter, the marriage-of-Mademoiselle, or the “incendie”
letter. She can touch you off a situation in a phrase excellently
well, as when after a quarrel comes a reconciliation between her and
her brother Henry, and she says, “’Tis wonderful to see what curtseys
and legs pass between us; and as before we were thought the kindest
brother and sister, we are certainly now the most complimental
couple in England”; or, asking “Is it true my Lord Whitelocke goes
Ambassador?” she comments upon him, “He was never meant for a courtier
at home, I believe. Yet ’tis a gracious Prince.” Another Commonwealth
lord, whose title depended upon the standing of the Court of Chancery,
has a flick in the same letter: “’Twill be sad news for my Lord Keble’s
son. He will have nothing left to say when ‘my Lord, my father,’ is
taken from him.” Those are both brisk and pleasant; more ambitious is
her discussion of the “ingredients” of a husband, which opens with
sketches of impossible husbands. He “must not be so much of a country
gentleman as to understand nothing but horses and dogs, and be fonder
of either than his wife”; nor one “whose aim reaches no further than
to be Justice of the Peace, and once in his life High Sheriff”; nor “a
thing that began the world in a free school ... and is at his furthest
when he reaches the Inns of Court.” He must not be “a town gallant
neither, that lives in a tavern and an ordinary,” who “makes court
to all the women he sees, thinks they believe him, and laughs and is
laughed at equally”; nor a “travelled Monsieur, whose head is all
feather inside and outside, that can talk of nothing but dances and
duels, and has courage enough to wear slashes when everybody else dies
of cold to see him.” In fact, “he must love me, and I him, as much as
we are capable of.” Those impersonations might have come as well from
Belmont as from Chicksands.
I said just now that we have no “prairie” letter from Dorothy. We have
something not far from it, though, and I will give as much of it as I
dare. It is of her very best in the way of unforced, happy description;
but after it I must give no more. The date of it is early May, 1653:
“You ask me how I pass my time here. I can give you a perfect account
not only of what I do for the present, but of what I am likely to
do this seven years if I stay here so long. I rise in the morning
reasonably early, and before I am ready I go round the house till I
am weary of that, and then into the garden till it grows too hot for
me. About ten o’clock I think of making me ready, and when that’s done
I go into my father’s chamber, and from thence to dinner, where my
cousin Mollie and I sit in great state in a room and at a table that
would hold a great many more. After dinner we sit and talk till Mr. B.
(a suitor of Dorothy’s, a Mr. Levinus Bennet) comes in question, and
then I am gone. The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and
about six or seven o’clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by
the house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and cows, and
sit in the shade singing of ballads. I go to them and compare their
voices and beauties to some ancient shepherdesses that I have read of,
and find a vast difference there; but, trust me, I think these are as
innocent as those could be. I talk to them, and find they want nothing
to make them the happiest people in the world but the knowledge that
they are so.”
I could go on to empty the whole paragraph on to the page, for it is
all excellent; but will stop with that happily rounded period. Charm,
or the deuce, is in it.
Beyond it I will not go. Too little straw has been allowed to the
making of my brick. With twice as much more--with some of the letters
to Lady Diana or Queen Mary, freed from the preoccupations of a love
affair--who can say that we might not have had something to set off
against the letters to Mesdames de Lafayette, de Coulanges, de Guitant?
We have something very distinctive and charming, at any rate, enough
to certify us that we have missed of a letter-writer of excellence
who need not have feared comparison with our best. She had not the
vivacity, or the opportunities of Lady Mary; but she had what that
lively observer missed of, a heart wherewith to inform her writing. She
had not the wit of Lady Harriet Granville, but she had more humanity.
I would not put her up, in a Court of Claims, to “walk” before Mrs.
Carlyle, or plead her sagacity and tenderness against that unhappy
woman’s brilliancy. Yet who would hesitate in the choice of one of them
for correspondent? Whose book would you sooner have at the bed’s head?
Such questions, however, do not arise. You judge Literature like coins
at the Mint. You are either good or bad. If you ring false--out you go.
REALISM WITH A DIFFERENCE
_Moll Flanders_, which has now received the large octavo honours due
to a classic, was written, Defoe tells us, in 1683. The statement is
almost certainly part of the cheat, for it was published in 1722, two
years after _Robinson Crusoe_; and if it had been true he would have
performed a feat which has never been equalled, that of writing his
first novel with the accomplishment shown in that of his prime. Nothing
in the technique of _Crusoe_ shows any advance upon _Moll Flanders_.
Its greater popularity is, of course, due to its matter: it is more
_simpatico_, more moving, more endearing to youth. The adventures upon
the island are more arbitrary and more surprising. They come from
outside the hero, not from his inside. Anything shocking may happen
upon a desert island, even the greatest shock of all, which is to find
that it is not deserted. _Suave mari magno_ ... the tag holds good when
you are thrilled by a tale in the first person. The flesh creeps; but
it is like being tickled by a kindly hand. The pleasure to be had from
_Moll Flanders_ comes when we know enough of the world to have need of
large allowances. Then it is that we are interested in the liabilities
of character, and love to see the oracle worked out. In _Moll Flanders_
we do. With the single premise that Moll was the abandoned child of a
thief and baggage, cast upon the parish by gypsies, everything that
happens to her follows as inevitably as night the day. She engages
the compassion of a genteel family, and is taken in quasi-adoption.
She grows up with the children of the house, petted by the daughters,
and in due time, naturally, by the sons, one of whom “undoes” her.
But by the time that happens we know something of Moll’s temperament,
and nod sagaciously at what, we say, was bound to be. So it goes on
from stave to stave to make out the promise of the title-page that,
born in Newgate, she was “Twelve Year a _Whore_, five times a _Wife_
(whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a _Thief_, Eight Year a
transported _Felon_ in _Virginia_, at last grew _Rich_, liv’d Honest,
and died a _Penitent_.” It sounds uncommonly like Boccaccio’s tale of
the Princess of Babylon, not at all unlike _Gil Blas_; but the point is
that it is most of all like Life, that the lurid programme is smoothly
and punctually kept, and that we never withhold our assent for a
moment--not even from the added statement that it was “Written from her
own Memorandums.” It is no more necessary to believe that than that it
was written in 1683; but there is no difficulty in believing either.
Defoe, if he began to write novels at fifty-eight, came by his method
as Athené by her ægis; it sprang fully armed from his brain. He never
varied it for a worse, and could not have for a better. It was to
tell his story in plain English without emotion, and to get his facts
right. That is his secret, which nobody since his time has ever worked
so well. The _Police News_ style has often been used, and many a
writer has laboured after his facts. Some have succeeded--very few--in
smothering their feelings, and some, of course, have had no feelings
to smother. Defoe alone accomplishes his ends with consummate mastery.
He is certainly our greatest realist, and there are few in France to
beat him. Perhaps the nearest approach to him was made by the Abbé
Prevost in _Manon Lescaut_ (1731)--but put Zola beside him if you
would judge his method fairly. Zola, who went about his business with
stuffed notebooks, succeeded in various aims of the novelist, but not
in commanding assent. He could not control himself; the poor man had an
itch. Artistically speaking, he did unpardonable things. Some of the
bestiality of _La Terre_ might have happened in a Norman village; a
Norman village _might_ have been called Rognes. To conjoin the two in
a realistic romance is paltry. It absolutely disenchants the reader,
and gives away the writer and his malady with both hands. You may
call a town Eatanswill in a satire; but _La Terre_ is not a satire.
As for _Manon_, astonishingly documented as it is, the conviction
which it carries does not survive perusal, though it revives in every
re-perusal. Its intention, which is rather to suggest than to narrate,
to provoke than to satisfy, is apparent when the book is shut. No such
aims are to be detected in _Moll Flanders_, concerned apparently with
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
The triumph of the method, used as Defoe only can use it, remains
to be told. _Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner._ We can all see
round Moll Flanders, behind her as well as before. The current of the
tale, every coil and eddy and backwash of it, is not only exactly
like life, it puts us in a position to appraise life. Conviction of
such a matter, rare as it is, is not so difficult to secure as the
understanding of it. There are, of course, extenuating circumstances
in every guilty course. One finds them for oneself as a neighbour, in
the jury box, on the bench. One finds them or invents them. In _Moll
Flanders_ they steal upon us unawares until, quite suddenly, we find
ourselves with her in a human relationship. Her close shaves, her
near-run things in shop-lifting give us thrills; but when she is rash
enough to steal a horse we are aghast. Mad-woman! how can she dispose
of a horse in a common lodging-house? When she is finally lagged we
agonise with her. Why? We know that she could not help herself. But
there’s more than that. She is never put beyond our moral pale. She
steals from children, but suffers both shame and sorrow. She robs a
poor householder of her valuables in a fire, but cannot forget the
treachery. She picks the pocket of a generous lover when he is drunk,
but repents and confesses. He forgives her, and so do we. All her
normal relations with her fellow-creatures are warm with the milk of
human kindness. For instance, she puts herself, for business purposes,
in the disposition of a “Governess,” that is, an old gentlewoman who
is procuress, midwife, baby-farmer, and receiver of stolen goods. But
the pair are on happy and natural terms. Moll calls her Mother; the
old thing calls Moll Child; and when she is transported as a convicted
thief she entrusts “Mother” with all her little fortune, and is
faithfully served in that and other concerns. The pair of them, rascals
together, are bad lots, if you will--and good sorts too. That’s the
virtue of the realistic method when you are not on the look out for bad
smells.
In her dealings with my sex, certainly she was often and unguardedly
a wife, as well as something else not so proper. Yet kindness was her
only fault. Whatever else she may have been as a wife, she was a good
one, faithful, affectionate, sympathetic, and most responsive. If the
young man who undid her had kept his promises, I daresay she would have
lived to be Mayoress of Colchester and mother to some sixteen children,
without a stain upon her character. As it was, she must have had half
that number. She is never a beast. She never revels, nor wallows, nor
is besotted; she is no slave to appetite. She plays hazard one night
and wins a matter of fifty guineas. She will not play again for fear of
becoming a gamester. She continues a thief for many years, though often
moved to break away. Why does she not break away?
“Though by this job I was become considerably richer than before,
yet the resolution I had formerly taken of leaving off this horrid
trade when I had gotten a little more, did not return, but I
must still get farther, and more; and the avarice joined so with
the success, that I had no more thoughts of coming to a timely
alteration of life, though without it I could expect no safety, no
tranquillity in the possession of what I had so wickedly gained;
but a little more, and a little more, was the case still.”
What could be more human, and on our footing more reasonable, than
that? That, in fact, which saved _The Beggar’s Opera_ from being an
immoral, cynical, even a flagrant work, was precisely that which gives
Moll Flanders our sympathy--its large humanity. There is heart in
every average human being, as well as much vice and an amazing amount
of indolence; but to see it there you must have it yourself, and to
exhibit it there you must be a good deal of a genius. We feel for Moll
without esteeming her: we say, “There but for the grace of God....”
What saves us? Well, caution, timidity, the likes of those; but chiefly
the grace of God.
MR. PEPYS HIS APPLE-CART
It is hard to deal fairly by Samuel Pepys, and that because he has
dealt so fairly by himself. You cannot even put that amazing candour of
his down to his credit, for reasons which grow upon you as you read.
If he was candid it was to please himself, and, as one must suppose,
nobody else in the world. Whatever his motive was, it certainly was not
to read a moral lesson to mankind. But that he is all in his Diary, the
whole of him, inside and out, is evident upon any prolonged perusal of
it. He has neither been blind to himself, nor kind; he never excuses
himself, and rarely accuses. He pities himself, when he has been found
out, and hugs himself when he has made a good deal, or played the
fortunate gallant; but he rarely indeed pities anybody else, and if he
hugs other persons, always mentions it. Though we cannot impute his
honesty to righteousness, nevertheless it seems rather hard that he
should have to suffer for it.
Anyhow, his merits would have transpired without a diary. State
papers exist to testify to them; his mounting credit is its own
record. Evelyn liked him, so did the King and his brother, so did
Sir William Coventry. Undoubtedly he was an able Clerk of the Acts,
and by the standard of any times but some which are still modern
history, an honest public servant. Had he lived in the golden age of
the Civil Service, an age which only ended a few years ago, he would
not have taken any commissions at all. As things are now, he took
very few; as they were in his day, what he took was negligible. I
feel sure that the Crown did uncommonly well by him. Then, socially,
he was a brisk, companionable creature, with an infectious laugh, a
taste for languages, the drama, parlour-science and chamber-music.
He had curiosity, which always makes a man good company; he was
both dilettante and connoisseur; he was affable with all sorts and
conditions, gave himself no airs, had vanity, but little conceit. Women
liked him; he had a way with him. And then he liked them. I cannot
imagine Pepys for five minutes in a woman’s company without her knowing
all that she need about him, and about it. Morally, he was a beast,
without pity or scruple, or personal shame, or courage, or honour. He
was depraved, and knew it, and didn’t care so long as no one else knew
it. He was the slave of public opinion, and in moments of apprehension
what that might be, sacrificed his companion in his dealing without a
thought. And yet women liked him, and suffered him. Psychologically, he
is, so far, an unsolved problem. Nobody has found out why on earth he
wrote himself down what he did write down; I have seen no account which
satisfies. To that I should add that no attempt to explain him seems to
have been made since we received all that we ever can receive of his
Diary.