_By Mrs. Andrew Lang_.
Dear Miss Somerville,--I was much interested in your fruitless struggle
to read "Sir Charles Grandison,"--the book whose separate numbers were
awaited with such impatience by Richardson's endless lady friends and
correspondents, and even by the rakish world--even by Colley Cibber
himself. I sympathize entirely with your estimate of its dulness; yet,
dull as it is, it is worth wading through to understand the kind of
literature which could flutter the dove-cotes of the last century in a
generation earlier than the one that was moved to tears by the wearisome
dramas of Hannah More.
There is only one character in the whole of "Sir Charles Grandison" where
Richardson is in the least like himself--in the least like the Richardson
of "Pamela" and "Clarissa." This character is Miss Charlotte Grandison,
the sister of Sir Charles, and later (after many vicissitudes) the wife
of Lord G. Miss Grandison's conduct falls infinitely beneath the high
standard attained to by the rest of Sir Charles's chosen friends. She is
petulant and loves to tease; is uncertain of what she wants; she is
lively and sarcastic, and, worse than all, abandons the rounded periods
of her brother and Miss Byron for free, not to say slang, expressions.
"Hang ceremony!" she often exclaims, with much reason, while "What a
deuce!" is her favourite expletive.
The conscientious reader heaves a sigh of relief when this young lady and
her many indiscretions appear on the scene; when Miss Grandison, like
Nature, "takes the pen from Richardson and writes for him." But I gather
that you, my dear Miss Somerville, never got far enough to make her
acquaintance, and therefore are still ignorant of the singular qualities
of her brother, Sir Charles--Richardson's idea of a perfect man, for both
brother and sister are introduced at almost the same moment.
Now it is nearly as difficult to realize that Sir Charles is a young man
of twenty-six, as it is to feel that his antithesis, the adorable Pepys
of the "Diary," was of that precise age. Sir Charles might be borne with
good-naturedly for a short time as an old gentleman who had become
garrulous from want of contradiction, but in any other aspect he would be
shunned conscientiously. Yet Richardson is not content with putting into
his mouth lengthy discourses tending chiefly, though expressed with mock
humility, to his own glorification; but he keeps all the other characters
perpetually dancing round the Baronet in a chorus of praise. "Was there
ever such a man, my Harriet, so good, so just, so noble in his
sentiments?" "Ah, my Lucy, dare I hope for the affection of the best of
men?" Some people would have begged their friends to cease making them
ridiculous, but not so Sir Charles.
But, my dear, trying as Sir Charles is at all moments, he is infinitely
at his worst when he attempts to be jocose, when he rallies the
step-mother of his friend Beauchamp in a sprightly manner, or exchanges
quips with Harriet's cousins at the house of "that excellent ancient,"
her grandmother. It is a mammoth posing as a kitten, though whatever he
says or does, his audience throw up their hands and eyes and ask: "Was
there ever such a man?" "Thank Heaven, _never_!" the nineteenth century
replies unanimously.
Secure as he is of the contemporary public verdict, Sir Charles does not
attempt to repress his love of "pawing" all his female acquaintances. He
is eternally taking their hands, putting his arm round their waists,
leading them up and down, and permitting himself liberties that in a less
perfect character would be considered intolerable. It is also
interesting to note that he never addresses any of his female friends
without the prefix "my." "My Harriet," "my Emily," "my Charlotte," are
his usual forms, and he is likewise very much addicted to the use of the
third person, which may, however, have been the result of his long
residence in Italy.
Little as you read of the book, no doubt you were struck--you _must_ have
been--by the singular practice in this very matter of Christian names,
and also by the enormous satisfaction with which every one promptly
adopts every one else as his brother or sister. As regards names, no
sooner has Sir Charles rescued Harriet from the clutches of Sir Hargrave
Pollexfen, than he calls her "_his_ Harriet," though, when he is once
engaged to her, then this is changed into "infinitely obliging Miss
Byron." His eldest sister, one year his senior, is always "Lady L." to
him, and on her marriage "his Charlotte," aged twenty-four, becomes "Lady
G.;" but no one ever ventures to address him with anything more familiar
than "Sir Charles." Harriet, indeed, once gets as far as "my Cha-" but
this was in a moment of extreme emotion--one of the excesses of youth.
Of course the method of telling his story in letters necessitates the
acceptance of various improbabilities; reticence has sometimes to be
violated, and confidences to be unduly made. Still, with all these
allowances, the gossip of every one with regard to the likelihood of Sir
Charles returning Harriet's very thinly veiled attachment is highly
undignified, and often indecent. The Object himself, for whom no less
than seven ladies were at that time openly sighing, alone ignores
Harriet's love, or, at any rate, appears to do so. But his sisters
freely and frequently charge her with having fallen in love with him. She
writes pages to her whole family as to his behaviour on particular
occasions, while his ward, Emily Jervois, begs permission to take up her
abode with Harriet when she and Sir Charles are married.
Miss Jervois, who is Richardson's idea of a _jeune personne bien elevee_,
is a compound of tears, of servility, and of undisguised love for her
guardian. She is much more like the heroine of a French drama than an
English girl of fourteen, and I dread to think what effect she would have
on a free-born American! Harriet, as you know, is not quite hopeless at
first, but the descent is easy, and, in the end, we quite agree with all
the admiring circle, that they were made for each other. They were
equally pompous, and used stilts of equal height.
"Sir Charles Grandison" was the last, the most socially ambitious, and
much the worst of Richardson's novel's. Smollett came to his best in his
last, "Humphrey Clinker." Fielding sobered down into the kind excellence
of _his_ last, "Amelia." Neither had been flattered and coddled by
literary ladies, like Richardson. What of "Pamela" and "Clarissa"? May
a maiden read the book that the young lady studied over Charles Lamb's
shoulder? Well, I think, as you have now passed your quarter of a
century, it would do you no harm to read the other two, which are
infinitely better than "Sir Charles." The worthy Miss Byron, aged only
twenty, indeed, writes to her Lucy to remind her that "their grandmother
had told them twenty and twenty frightful stories of the vile enterprises
of men against innocent creatures," and that they can both "call to mind
stories which had ended much worse than hers (the affair with Sir
Hargrave Pollexfen) had done."
Grandmothers now choose other topics of conversation for their
descendants, but in those old days when sedan-chairs made _enlevements_
so very easy, it was considered necessary to caution girls against all
the possible wiles of man. Even little boys, strange as it may sound,
were given "Pamela" to read after the Bible. More than this, one small
creature, Harry Campbell by name, so young that he always spoke of
himself as "little Harry," obtained the book by stealth in his guardian's
house, and never stopped till he finished it. When Richardson, on being
told of this, sent him a copy for his own, he nearly went out of his
senses with delight.
Of course you know the outline of Pamela's story. How at eleven she was
taken and educated by a lady, who on her death, when Pamela was sixteen,
left her not only more beautiful, but more accomplished than any girl of
her years. How Pamela's young master fell in love with her, persecuted
her, and after moving adventures of all kinds, being convinced that she
was not to be overcome, married her, and they lived happy, with one brief
exception, ever after. The proper frame of mind in which to read
"Pamela" is to consider it in the light of an historical joke.
The absolute want of dignity that is almost as marked a characteristic in
Richardson as his lack of humour, shows itself again and again. After
all, Mr. B. would never have married Pamela if he could have persuaded
her to live with him in any other way; so the cringing gratitude
expressed by Pamela and her parents to the "good gentleman" and the "dear
obliger" is only revolting. No woman with any delicacy of feeling could
have sat complacently at her own table, while her husband entertained his
company with prolonged and minute accounts of his attempts on her virtue.
Can you fancy Fielding composing such a scene, Fielding whom Richardson
scouts as a profligate? It is impossible not to laugh at the bare idea;
and no less funny are Pamela's poetical flights, especially when, like
Hamilton of Bangour in exile, she paraphrases the paraphrase of the 137th
Psalm, about her captivity in Lincolnshire. All through one has to
remind one's self perpetually that Pamela must not be expected to behave
like a lady, and that if her father had done as he ought and removed her
from her place when she first told him of her uneasiness, there would
have been no story at all, and some other book would have had to rank in
the opinion of Richardson's adorers "next to the Bible."
Still, whatever may have to be said as to Richardson's subjects, he is
never coarse in his treatment of them. The pursuit of Pamela by Mr. B.,
or of Clarissa by Lovelace, through eight volumes, may weary; it does not
corrupt. No man or maid on earth could lay it to his charge that he or
she had been corrupted by these books, while no man on earth could read
"Clarissa" without being touched by the noble ending. If "Clarissa" had
never been written we should have said that the good-natured, fussy,
essentially middle-class bookseller, Samuel Richardson, was unable to
draw a lady; and it is curious to see how Clarissa stands out, not only
among Richardson's female characters, but among the female characters of
all time; eminent she is for purity of soul, and nobility of feeling.
There is no cant about her anywhere, no effort to pose or to strain after
a state of mind which she cannot naturally experience. The business-like
manner in which she makes her preparations for death have nothing
sentimental about them, nothing that even faintly suggests the pretty
death-beds with which Mr. Dickens and others have made us familiar; but I
doubt if the most practical money-maker in Wall Street could read it
without feeling uncomfortable.
How, after describing such a character as Clarissa, Richardson could turn
to the whale-bone figures in "Sir Charles Grandison" is quite
incomprehensible. Had he been ruined by his numerous female admirers and
correspondents, or by his desire to become fashionable, or, as is most
likely, by the wish to create in Sir Charles a virtuous foil to him whom
he thought the wicked, witty, delightful, and detestable Lovelace?
Whatever the reason, it is a thousand pities that he gave way to his
impulse.
It would interest you as well as me to note little points of manners that
are to be gathered from the three books. I have not time to write much
more, but will tell you two or three that have struck me. If you read
them, as I still hope you may, you will see what early risers they all
are, even the wicked Mr. B.; while Clarissa, when in Dover Street,
usually gives Lovelace his interviews at six in the morning. One hears
of two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage. How much more wonderful is love
that rises at six!
Richardson was a woman's novelist, as Fielding was a man's. I sometimes
think of Dr. Johnson's _mot_: "Claret for boys, port for men, and,"
smiling, "brandy for heroes." So one might fancy him saying: "Richardson
for women, Fielding for men, Smollett for ruffians," though some of _his_
rough customers were heroes, too. But we now confine ourselves so
closely to "the later writers" of Russia, France, England, America, that
the woman who reads Richardson may be called heroic. "To the unknown
heroine" I dedicate my respect, as the Athenians dedicated an altar to
"the unknown hero." Will you be the heroine? I am afraid you won't!