THE WOMEN NOVELISTS

BY
R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON
AUTHOR OF
“TALES PROM CHAUCER” “TOWARDS RELIGION”
“TENNYSON AND HIS POETRY”

LONDON: 48 PALL MALL
W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.
GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND

Copyright 1918

I have to thank the editor and publisher of The Athenæum for permission to reprint the chapter on “Parallel Passages”; the editor and publisher of The Gownsman for permission to use “A Study in Fine Art”; Professor Gollancz and Messrs. Chatto & Windus for permission to reprint the section on “Cranford” which was written for an Introduction to a reprint of that novel in “The King’s Classics.”

CONTENTS

THE WOMEN NOVELISTS

INTRODUCTION

Although women wrote novels before Defoe, the father of English fiction, or Richardson, the founder of the modern novel, we cannot detect any peculiarly feminine elements in their work, or profitably consider it apart from the general development of prose.

In the beginning they copied men, and saw through men’s eyes, because—here and elsewhere—they assumed that men’s dicta and practice in life and art were their only possible guides and examples. Women to-day take up every form of fiction attempted by men, because they assume that their powers are as great, their right to express themselves equally varied.

But there was a period, covering about a hundred years, during which women “found themselves” in fiction, and developed the art, along lines of their own, more or less independently. This century may conveniently be divided into three periods, which it is the object of the following pages to analyse:

From the publication of Evelina to the publication of Sense and Sensibility, 1778-1811.

From the publication of Sense and Sensibility to the publication of Jane Eyre, 1811-1847.

From the publication of Jane Eyre to the publication of Daniel Deronda, 1847-1876.

It may be noticed, however, in passing to the establishment of a feminine school by Fanny Burney, that individual women did pioneer work; among whom the earliest, and the most important, is “the ingenious Mrs. Aphra Behn” (1640-1689). She is generally believed to have been the first woman “to earn a livelihood in a profession, which, hitherto, had been exclusively monopolized by men,”—“she was, moreover, the first to introduce milk punch into England”! For much of her work she adopted a masculine pseudonym and, with it, a reckless licence no doubt essential to success under the Restoration. Yet she wrote “the first prose story that can be compared with things that already existed in foreign literatures”; and, allowing for a few rather outspoken descriptive passages, there is nothing peculiarly objectionable in her Oroonoko; or, The History of the Royal Slave. Making use of her own experience of the West Indies, acquired in childhood, she invented the “noble savage,” the “natural man,” long afterwards made fashionable by Rousseau; and boldly contrasted the ingenuous virtues, and honour, of this splendid heathen with Christian treachery and avarice. The “great and just character of Oroonoko,” indeed, would scarcely have satisfied “Revolutionary” ideals of the primitive; since he was inordinately proud of his birth and his beauty, and killed his wife from an “artificial” sense of honour. But there is a naïvely exaggerated simplicity in Mrs. Behn’s narrative; which does faithfully represent, as she herself expresses it, “an absolute idea of the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin.” Whence she declares “it is most evident and plain, that simple nature is the most harmless, inoffensive, and virtuous mistress. It is she alone, if she were permitted, that better instructs the world than all the inventions of man: religion would here but destroy that tranquility they possess by ignorance; and laws would but teach them to know offence, of which now they have no notion ... they have a native justice, which knows no fraud; and they understand no vice, or cunning, but when they are taught by the white men.”

Our author is quite uncompromising in this matter; and her eulogy of “fig-leaves” should refute the most cynical: “I have seen a handsome young Indian, dying for love of a beautiful Indian maid; but all his courtship was, to fold his arms, pursue her with his eyes, and sighs were all his language: while she, as if no such lover were present, or rather as if she desired none such, carefully guarded her eyes from beholding him; and never approached him, but she looked down with all the blushing modesty I have seen in the most severe and cautious of our world.”

The actual story of Oroonoko will hardly move us to-day; and the final scene, where that Prince and gentleman is seen smoking a pipe (!) as the horrid Christians “hack off” his limbs one by one, comes dangerously near the ludicrous. Still we may “hope,” with the modest authoress, that “the reputation of her pen is considerable enough to make his glorious name to survive all ages.”

It should finally be remarked that Aphra forestalls one more innovation of the next century, by introducing slight descriptions of scenery; and that here, as always, she arrested her readers’ attention by plunging straight into the story.

Two other professional women of that generation deserve mention: Mrs. Manley (1672-1724), author of the scurrilous New Atalantis, and Mrs. Heywood (or Haywood) (1693-1756), editor of the Female Spectator. Both were employed by their betters for the secret promotion of vile libels—the former political, the latter literary; and both wrote novels of some vigour, but deservedly forgotten: although the latest, and best, of Mrs. Manley’s were written after Pamela, and bear striking witness to the influence of Richardson.

A few more years bring us to the true birth of the modern novel; when Sarah Fielding (1710-1768), whose David Simple, in an unfortunate attempt to combine sentiment with the picaresque, revealed some of her brother’s humour and the decided influence of Richardson. And though The Female Quixote of Charlotte Lennox (1720-1804) has been pronounced “more absurd than any of the romances which it was designed to ridicule,” Macaulay himself allows it “great merit, when considered as a wild satirical harlequinade”; and it remains an early, if not the first, example of conscious revolt against the artificial tyrannies of “Romance,” of which the evil influences on the art of fiction were soon to be triumphantly abolished for ever by a sister-authoress.

THE FIRST WOMAN NOVELIST
(Fanny Burney, 1752-1840)

It is, to-day, a commonplace of criticism that the novel proper, though partially forestalled in subject and treatment by Defoe, began with Richardson’s Pamela in 1740. The main qualities which distinguish this work from our earlier “romances” were the attempt to copy, or reproduce, real life; and the choice of middle-class society for dramatis personæ. It is difficult for us to realise how long the prejudice against “middle-class” characters held sway; but no doubt Christopher North reflected the sentiments of the majority in 1829 when he represented the “Shepherd” declaring it to be his “profound conviction that the strength o’ human nature lies either in the highest or lowest estate of life. Characters in books should either be kings, and princes, and nobles, and on a level with them, like heroes; or peasants, shepherds, farmers, and the like, includin’ a’ orders amaist o’ our ain working population. The intermediate class—that is, leddies and gentlemen in general—are no worth the Muse’s while; for their life is made up chiefly o’ mainners,—mainners,—mainners;—you canna see the human creters for their claes; and should ane o’ them commit suicide in despair, in lookin’ on the dead body, you are mair taen up wi’ its dress than its decease.” The “romance” only condescended below Prince or Peer for the exhibition of the Criminal. It aimed at exaggeration in every detail for dramatic effect. It recognised no limit to the resources of wealth, the beauty of virtue, the splendour of heroism, or the corruption of villainy. It permitted the supernatural. Fielding clearly considers it necessary to apologise for the vulgarity of mere “human nature”:

“The provision, then, which we have here made, is no other than Human Nature: nor do I fear that any sensible reader, though most luxurious in his taste, will start, cavil, or be offended because I have named but one article. The tortoise, as the alderman of Bristol, well learned in eating, knows by much experience, besides the delicious calipash and calipee, contains many different kinds of food; nor can the learned reader be ignorant, that in human nature, though here collected under one general name, is such prodigious variety, that a cook will have sooner gone through all the several species of animal and vegetable food in the world, than an author will be able to exhaust so extensive a subject.

“An objection may perhaps be apprehended from the more delicate, that this dish is too vulgar and common; for what else is the subject of all the romances, novels, plays, and poems, with which the stalls abound? Many exquisite viands might be rejected by the epicure, if it was sufficient cause for his contemning of them as common and vulgar, that something was to be found in the most paltry alleys under the same name. In reality, true nature is as difficult to be met with in authors, as the Bayonne ham, or Bologna sausage, is to be found in the shops.

“But the whole, to continue the metaphor, consists in the cooking of the author; for, as Mr. Pope tells us,—

‘True wit is nature to advantage dress’d;
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d.’

“The same animal which hath the honour to have some part of his flesh eaten at the table of a duke, may perhaps be degraded in another part, and some of his limbs gibbetted, as it were, in the vilest stall in town. Where then lies the difference between the food of the nobleman and the porter, if both are at dinner on the same ox or calf, but in the seasoning, the dressing, the garnishing, and the setting forth? Hence the one provokes and incites the most languid appetite, and the other turns and palls that which is the sharpest and keenest.

“In like manner the excellence of the mental entertainment consists less in the subject than in the author’s skill in well dressing it up. How pleased, therefore, will the reader be to find that we have, in the following work, adhered closely to one of the highest principles of the best cook which the present age, or perhaps that of Heliogabalus, hath produced? This great man, as is well known to all lovers of polite eating, begins at first by setting plain things before his hungry guests, rising afterwards by degrees, as their stomachs may be supposed to decrease, to the very quintessence of sauce and spices.

“In like manner we shall represent human nature at first, to the keen appetite of our reader, in that more plain and simple manner in which it is found in the country, and shall hereafter hash and ragout it with all the high French and Italian seasoning of affectation and vice which courts and cities afford. By these means, we doubt not but our reader may be rendered desirous to read on for ever, as the great person just above mentioned, is supposed to have made some persons eat.”

Samuel Richardson, printer, revolutionised fiction. He inaugurated a method of novel-writing: shrewdly adapted, and developed, by Fielding; boisterously copied by Smollett; humorously varied by Goldsmith and Sterne. And when the new ideal of realism and simple narrative had been thus, more or less consciously, established as fit fruit for the circulating library: that “evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge,” finally purified of all offence against decency, was planted in every household by a timid and bashful young lady, who “hemmed and stitched from breakfast to dinner with scrupulous regularity.”

The mental development of Frances Burney, authoress of Evelina, was encouraged by “no governess, no teacher of any art or of any language.” Her father’s library contained only one novel; and she does not appear to have supplemented it in this particular. But the peculiar circumstances of Dr. Burney’s social position, and the infectious enthusiasm of his artistic temperament, provided his daughter with very exceptional opportunities for the study of material appropriate to the construction of a modern novel. On the one hand, he permitted her free intercourse “with those whom butlers and waiting-maids call vulgar”; and, on the other, he gave her every opportunity of watching Society at ease in the company of artists and men of letters. At his concerts and tea-parties, again, she often saw Johnson and Garrick; Bruce, Omai, and the “lions” of her generation; the peers and the politicians; the ambassadors and the travellers; the singers and the fiddlers.

And, finally, if her most worthy stepmother has been derided for the conventionality which discouraged the youthful “observer,” and dictated a “bonfire” for her early manuscripts, it may not be altogether fanciful to conjecture that the domestic ideals of feminine propriety thus inculcated had some hand in shaping the precise direction of the influence which Fanny was destined to exert upon the development of her art.

For if Evelina was modelled on the work of Richardson, and the fathers of fiction, who had so recently passed away, it nevertheless inaugurated a new departure—the expression of a feminine outlook on life. It was, frankly and obviously, written by a woman for women, though it captivated men of the highest intellect.

We need not suppose that Johnson’s pet “character-monger” set out with any intention of accomplishing this reform; but the woman’s view is so obvious on every page that we can scarcely credit the general assumption of “experienced” masculine authorship, which was certainly prevalent during the few weeks it remained anonymous. It would have been far more reasonable for the public to have accepted the legend of its being written by a girl of seventeen. For the heroine is represented as being no older; and though Miss Burney was twenty-six at the time, she has been most extraordinarily successful in assuming the tone of extreme youth, and thus emphasising still further the innovation. Its main subject is “The Introduction of a Young Lady to the World”; and being told in letters from the heroine to her guardian, could scarcely have been better arranged, by a self-conscious artist, for the exposition of the novelty. On the other hand, the success of its execution doubtless owes much to the author’s spontaneity and to her untrained mind. It would seem that she was blissfully unconscious of any accepted “rules” in composition; and even in Cecilia, generally supposed to be partially disfigured by Johnson’s advice, it is only in the structure of her sentences that she attempted to be “correct.” It is a more complex variant of the same theme, with a precisely similar inspiration: the manipulation of her own experience of life, and her own comments thereon.

It is obvious that we can only realise the precise nature of what she accomplished for fiction by comparing her work with Richardson’s, since Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne wove all their stories about a “hero,” and even Goldsmith drew women through the spectacles of a naïvely “superior” and obviously masculine vicar. Richardson, on the other hand, was admittedly an expert in the analysis of the feminine. We must recognise a lack of virility in touch and outlook. The prim exactitude of his cautious realism, however startling in comparison with anything before Pamela, has much affinity with what our ancestors might have expected from their womenkind. Yet his women are quite obviously studies, not self-revelations. We can fancy that Pamela sat on his knee to have her portrait taken; while he was giving such infinite care to Clarissa’s drapery on the model’s throne. We can only marvel that he could ever determine whether Clementina or Miss Harriet Byron were a more worthy mate for “the perfect man.” Verily they were all as men made them; exquisite creatures, born for our delight, but regulated by our taste in loveliness and virtue. That marvellous little eighteenth-century tradesman understood their weaknesses no less than their perfections; but the fine lines of his brush show through every word or expression: the delicacy of outline is deliberately obtained by art. They are patently the fruits of acute observation, keen sympathy, and subtle draughtsmanship. They remain lay figures, posed for the centre of the picture. The showman is there, pulling the strings. And above all they are man-made. For all his extraordinary insight Richardson can only see woman from the outside. Our consciousness of his skill proves it is conscious. His world still centres round the hero: the rustic fine gentleman, the courtly libertine, or the immaculate male.

Fanny Burney reverses the whole process. To begin with external evidence: it is Evelina who tells the tale, and every person or incident is regarded from her point of view. The resultant difference goes to the heart of the matter. The reader does not here feel that he is studying a new type of female: he is making a new friend. Evelina and Cecilia speak for themselves throughout. There is no sense of effort or study; not because Fanny Burney is a greater artist or has greater power to conceal her art, but because, for the accomplishment of her task, she has simply to be herself. It is here, in fact, that we find the peculiar charm, and the supreme achievement, of the women who founded the school. By never attempting professional study of life outside their own experience, they were enabled to produce a series of feminine “Confessions”; which remain almost unique as human documents. We must recognise that it was Richardson who had made this permissible. He broke away, for ever, from the extravagant impossibilities and unrealities of Romance. He copied life, and life moreover in its prosaic aspect—the work-a-day, unpicturesque experience of the middle-class. But still he lingered among its crises. It is not that in his days men were still given to the expression of emotion by words, and deeds, of violence. While beautiful maidens were liable to be driven furiously by the villain into the presence of an unfrocked clergyman; while money could buy a whole army of accomplices for their undoing; Richardson remains a realist in the narration of such episodes. We are here referring to the fact that his stories are all concerned with the elaborate development of one central emotion or the analysis of one predominating character. They are pictures of life composed for the exhibition of a slightly phenomenal aspect: the depths of human nature, not commonly obvious to us in the moods of a day.

It was reserved for Fanny Burney, and still more Jane Austen, to “make a story” out of the trivialities of our everyday existence; to reveal humanity at a tea-party or an afternoon call. This is, of course, but carrying on his reform one step further. The women, besides introducing the new element of their own especial point of view, made the new realism strictly domestic; and learned to depend, even less than he, upon the exceptional, more obviously dramatic, or less normal, incidents of actual life. If Richardson invented the ideal of fidelity to human nature, Miss Burney selected its everyday habits and costume for imitation. Evelina’s account of “shopping” in London would not fit into Richardson’s scheme; while the many incidents and characters, introduced merely for comic effect, lie outside his province.

Miss Burney’s ideal for heroines, indeed, must seem singularly old-fashioned to-day; nor do we delight in Evelina for those passages to which its author devoted her most serious ambitions. She does not excel in minute, or sustained, characterisation; nor have we ever entirely confirmed the appreciation which declares that her work was “inspired by one consistent vein of passion, never relaxed.” The passion of Evelina—by which, however, the critic does not mean her love for Orville—has always seemed to us melodramatic and artificial. We have little, or no, patience with those refined tremors and heart-burnings which completely prostrate the young lady at the mere possibility of seeing her long-lost father. It is not in human nature to feel so deeply about anyone we have never seen, of whom we know nothing but evil.

No blame attaches to Miss Burney as an artist in this respect, however, because she was intent upon the revelation of sensibility, that most elusive of female graces on which our grandmothers were wont to pride themselves. Any definition of this quality, suited to our comprehension to-day, would seem beyond the subtleties of emotional analysis; but we may observe, as some indication of its meaning, that no man was ever supposed, or expected, to possess it. Sensibility, in fact, was the acknowledged privilege of ladies—as distinguished at once from gentlemen or women; particularly becoming in youth; and indicating the well-bred, the elegant, and the fastidious. It must not, of course, be confounded with “susceptibility,” a sign of weakness; for though it, temporarily, unfitted the lady for action or speech, it was the expression of deep, permanent, feeling and of exquisite taste. Her gentle voice rendered inaudible by tears, her streaming eyes buried in the cushions of her best sofa, or on the bosom of her best friend, the beautiful maiden would fondly persuade herself that her life was blighted for evermore. Pierced to the heart by a cold world, a faithless friend, or a stern parent, as the case might be, she would terrify those who loved her by the wild expression of her eyes, the dead whiteness of her lips, her feeble gesticulations, and the disorder of her whole person. In the end, mercifully, she would—faint! Under such influences, we cannot distinguish very explicitly between the effects of joy or sorrow. Evelina is scarcely more natural about her transports at discovering a brother, or in the final satisfaction of her filial instincts, than in her alarm about “how He would receive her,” already mentioned.

We are not justified, on the other hand, in supposing that a heroine should only exhibit sensibility on some real emotional catastrophe. There was a tendency, we have observed, in “elegant females” to be utterly abashed and penetrated with remorse, covered with shame, trembling with alarm, and on the verge of hysterics—from joy or grief—upon most trivial provocation. A tone, a look, even a movement, if unexpected or mysterious, was generally sufficient to upset the nice adjustment of their mental equilibrium. “Have I done wrong? Am I misunderstood? Is it possible he really loves me?” The dear creatures passed through life on the edge of a precipice: on the borderland between content, despair, and the seventh heaven.

The wonder of it all comes from admitting that Miss Burney actually reconciles us to such absurdities. Except in the passionate scenes, Evelina’s sensibility is one of her chief charms. In some mysterious and subtle fashion, it really indicates the superiority of her mind and her essential refinement. She will be prattling away, with all the naïveté of genuine innocence, about her delight in the condescending perfections of the “noble Orville,” and then—at one word of warning from her beloved guardian—the whole world assumes other aspects, no man may be trusted, and she would fly at once to peace, and forgetfulness, in the country. We smile, inevitably, at the “complete ingénue”; but the quick response to her old friend’s loving anxiety, the transparent candour of a purity which, if instinctive, is not dependent on ignorance, combine to form a really “engaging” personality.

It may be that we have here discovered the secret of sensibility—a perception of the fine shades, and instant responsiveness to them. There is, however, a most instructive passage in The Mysteries of Udolpho which throws much light on this matter. Mrs. Radcliffe has every claim to be heard, for her heroines are much addicted to sensibility. The passage occurs in an early chapter; when St. Aubert is dying, and naturally wishes to impress upon his orphan daughter such truths as may guide her safely through life. It has, therefore, all the significance of the death-bed; while he “had never thought more justly, or expressed himself more clearly, than he did now.” Under such circumstances, and in such manner, did that worthy gentleman discourse on

The Dangers of Sensibility

“Above all, my dear Emily, said he, do not indulge in the pride of fine feeling, the romantic error of amiable minds. Those who really possess sensibility ought early to be taught that it is a dangerous quality, which is continually extracting the excess of misery or delight from every surrounding circumstance. And since, in our passage through this world, painful circumstances occur more frequently than pleasing ones, and since our sense of evil is, I fear, more acute than our sense of good, we become the victim of our feelings, unless we can in some degree command them. I know you will say—for you are young, my Emily—I know you will say, that you are contented sometimes to suffer, rather than give up your refined sense of happiness at others; but when your mind has been long harassed by vicissitude, you will be content to rest, and you will then recover from your delusion: you will perceive that the phantom of happiness is exchanged for the substance; for happiness arises in a state of peace, not of tumult: it is of a temperate and uniform nature; and can no more exist in a heart that is continually alive to minute circumstances than in one that is dead to feeling. You see, my dear, that, though I would guard you against the dangers of sensibility, I am not an advocate for apathy. At your age, I should have said that is a vice more hateful than all the errors of sensibility, and I say so still. I call it a vice, because it leads to positive evil. In this, however, it does no more than an ill-governed sensibility, which, by such a rule, might also be called a vice; but the evil of the former is of more general consequence....

“I would not teach you to become insensible, if I could—I would only warn you of the evils of susceptibility, and point out how you may avoid them. Beware, my love, I conjure you, of that self-delusion which has been fatal to the peace of many persons—beware of priding yourself on the gracefulness of sensibility: if you yield to this vanity, your happiness is lost for ever. Always remember how much more valuable is the strength of fortitude, than the grace of sensibility. Do not, however, confound fortitude with apathy: apathy cannot know the virtue. Remember, too, that one act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world. Sentiment is a disgrace, instead of an ornament, unless it lead us to good actions: the miser, who thinks himself respectable merely because he possesses wealth, and thus mistakes the means of doing good for the actual accomplishment of it, is not more blameable than the man of sentiment without active virtue. You may have observed persons, who delight so much in this sort of sensibility to sentiment, that they turn from the distressed, and because their sufferings are painful to be contemplated, do not endeavour to relieve them. How despicable is that humanity which can be contented to pity where it might assuage!”

And we are finally disposed to question whether Miss Burney herself were actually conscious of the subtlety with which she has allowed her heroine to reveal, in every sentence, the scarcely perceptible advance of her unsuspected “partiality.” The reader, of course, recognises Orville at sight for what he proves to be in the final event; but he frequently reminds us of Sir Charles Grandison—and in nothing so much, perhaps, as in his gentlemanly precautions against letting himself go or expressing his emotions. Only a woman of real delicacy, indeed, could have imagined, or appreciated, the self-effacement with which he helps and protects the guileless heroine from her unprincipled admirers; and it required genuine refinement to give him the courage evinced by his tactful inquiries into her circumstances and his most fatherly advice. The whole development of the relations between them must be acknowledged as a triumph of art, and conclusive evidence of “nice” feeling.

It is impossible, I think, to put Cecilia herself on a level with Evelina; though I personally have always felt that the more crowded canvas of the book so entitled, and its greater variety of incident, reveal more mature power. But it is less spontaneous and, in a certain sense, less original. To begin with, Cecilia is always conscious of her superiority. Like her sister heroine, a country “miss,” and suddenly tossed into Society without any proper guidance, she yet assumes the centre of the stage without effort, and queens it over the most experienced, by virtue of beauty and wealth. It may be doubted if she has much “sensibility” for everyday matters: whereas the lavish expenditure of emotional fireworks over the haughty Delviles, and the melodramatic sufferings they entail, are most intolerably protracted, and entirely destroy our interest in the conclusion of the narrative. The occasional scene, or episode, we complained of in Evelina, is here extended to long chapters, or books, of equally strained passion on a more complex issue. Fortunately they all come at the end, and need not disturb our enjoyment of the main story; though, indeed, the whole plot depends far more on melodramatic effect. Mr. Harrell’s abominable recklessness, and his sensational suicide, the criminal passion of Mr. Monckton, and the story of Henrietta Belfield, carry us into depths beyond the reach of Evelina, where Miss Burney herself does not walk with perfect safety. And, in our judgment, such experiences diminish the charm of her heroine.

Yet in the main Cecilia possesses, and exhibits those primarily feminine qualities which now made their first appearance in English fiction, being beyond man’s power to delineate. She, too, is that “Womanly Woman” whom Mr. Bernard Shaw has so eloquently denounced. She has the magnetic power of personal attraction; the charm of mystery; the strength of weakness; the irresistible appeal with which Nature has endowed her for its own purposes: so seldom present in the man-made heroine, certainly not revealed to Samuel Richardson and his great contemporaries.

For the illustration of our main theme, we have so far dwelt upon the revelation of womanhood achieved by Miss Burney. It is time to consider, in more detail, her application of the new “realism,” her method of “drawing from life,” now first recognised as the proper function of the novelist. It is here that her unique education, or experience, has full play. Instead of depending, like Richardson, upon the finished analysis of a few characters, centred about one emotional situation, or of securing variety of interests and character-types, à la Fielding, by use of the “wild-oats” convention, she works up the astonishing “contrasts” in life, which she had herself been privileged to witness, and achieves comedy by the abnormal mixture of Society. Thus she is able to find drama in domesticity. Her most original effects are produced in the drawing-room or the assembly, at a ball or a theatre, in the “long walks” of Vauxhall or Ranelagh: wherever, and whenever, mankind is seen only at surface-value, enjoying the pleasures and perils of everyday existence. How vividly, as Macaulay remarks, did she conjecture “the various scenes, tragic and comic, through which the poor motherless girl, highly connected on one side, meanly connected on the other, might have to pass. A crowd of unreal beings, good and bad, grave and ludicrous, surrounded the pretty, timid young orphan: a coarse sea-captain; an ugly insolent fop, blazing in a superb court-dress; another fop, as ugly and as insolent, but lodged on Snow Hill, and tricked out in second-hand finery for the Hampstead ball; an old woman, all wrinkles and rouge, flirting her fan with the air of a Miss of seventeen, and screaming in a dialect made up of vulgar French and vulgar English; a poet lean and ragged, with a broad Scotch accent. By degrees these shadows acquired stronger and stronger consistence: the impulse which urged Fanny to write became irresistible; and the result was the history of Evelina.”

Of what must seem, to our thinking, the extraordinary licence permitted to persons accounted gentlemen, Miss Burney avails herself to the utmost; and Evelina is scarcely less often embarrassed or distressed by Willoughby’s violence and the insolence of Lord Merton, than by the stupid vulgarity of the Branghtons and “Beau” Smith. We have primarily the sharp contrast between Society and Commerce—each with its own standards of comfort, pleasure, and decorum; and secondarily, a great variety of individual character (and ideal) within both groups. The “contrasts” of Cecilia are, in the main, more specifically individual, lacking the one general sharp class division, and may be more accurately divided into one group of Society “types,” another of Passions exemplified in persons obsessed by a single idea. It is “in truth a grand and various picture-gallery, which presented to the eye a long series of men and women, each marked by some strong peculiar feature. There were avarice and prodigality, the pride of blood and the pride of money, morbid restlessness and morbid apathy, frivolous garrulity, supercilious silence, a Democritus to laugh at everything, and a Heraclitus to lament over everything.... Mr. Delvile never opens his lips without some allusion to his own birth and station; or Mr. Briggs, without some allusion to the hoarding of money; or Mr. Hobson, without betraying the self-indulgence and self-importance of a purse-proud upstart; or Mr. Simkins, without uttering some sneaking remark for the purpose of currying favour with his customers; or Mr. Meadows, without expressing apathy and weariness of life; or Mr. Albany, without declaiming about the vices of the rich and the miseries of the poor; or Mrs. Belfield, without some indelicate eulogy on her son; or Lady Margaret, without indicating jealousy of her husband. Morrice is all skipping, officious impertinence, Mr. Gosport all sarcasm, Lady Honoria all lively prattle, Miss Larolles all silly prattle.”

It is primarily, indeed, a most diverting picture of manners; and if, as we have endeavoured to show, Miss Burney advanced on Richardson by the revelation of womanhood in her heroines, the realism of her minor persons must be applauded rather for its variety in outward seeming than for its subtlety of characterisation. As Ben Jonson hath it:

“When some one peculiar quality
Does so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his effects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluxions all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a humour.”

It is in the exhibition of “humours” that our authoress delights and excels.

Of any particular construction Miss Burney was entirely guiltless; in this respect, of course, lagging far behind Fielding. She has no style, beyond a most attractive spontaneity; writing in “true woman’s English, clear, natural, and lively.” Under the watchful eye of Dr. Johnson, indeed, she made some attempt at the rounded period, the “elegant” antithesis, in Cecilia: but, regretting the obvious effort, we turn here again, with renewed delight, to the flowing simplicity of her dramatic dialogue.

There is no occasion, at this time of day, to dwell upon her sparkling wit, though we may note in passing its obviously feminine inspiration—as opposed to the more scholarly subtleties of Fielding—and its patent superiority to, for example, the kitten-sprightliness of Richardson’s “Lady G.” We cannot claim that Miss Burney made any particular advance in this matter; but, here again, her work stands out as the first permanent expression—at least in English—of that shrewd vivacity and quickness of observation with which so many a woman, who might have founded a salon, has been wont to enliven the conversation of the home and to promote the gaiety of social gatherings. We must recognise, on the other hand, that, if commonly more refined than her generation, Miss Burney has yielded to its prejudice against foreigners in some coarseness towards Madame Duval; as we marvel at her father’s approval of this detail—while actually deploring the vigour of her contempt for Lovel, the fop!

Finally, for all technicalities of her art, Miss Burney remains an amateur in authorship, who, by a lucky combination of genius and experience, was destined to utter the first word for women in the most popular form of literature; and to point the way to her most illustrious successors for the perfection of the domestic novel.

Probably the most important, more or less contemporary, criticism on the early achievements of women, was uttered—incidentally—by Hazlitt in 1818. Dismissing Miss Edgeworth’s Tales as “a kind of pedantic, pragmatical common-sense, tinctured with the pertness and pretensions of the paradoxes to which they are so complacently opposed,” assigning the first place to Mrs. Radcliffe for her power of “describing the indefinable and embodying a phantom,” he says of Miss Burney and of feminine work generally:

“Madame D’Arblay is a mere common observer of manners, and also a very woman. It is this last circumstance which forms the peculiarity of her writings, and distinguishes them from those masterpieces[1] which I have before mentioned. She is a quick, lively, and accurate observer of persons and things; but she always looks at them with a consciousness of her sex, and in that point of view in which it is the particular business and interest of women to observe them ... her forte is in describing the absurdities and affectations of external behaviour, or the manners of people in company.... The form such characters or people might be supposed to assume for a night at a masquerade....

“Women, in general, have a quicker perception of any oddity or singularity of character than men, and are more alive to any absurdity which arises from a violation of the rules of society, or a deviation from established custom. This partly arises from the restraints on their own behaviour, which turn their attention constantly on the subject, and partly from other causes. The surface of their minds, like that of their bodies, seems of a finer texture than ours; more soft, and susceptible of immediate impulses. They have less muscular strength, less power of continued voluntary attention, of reason, passion, and imagination; but they are more easily impressed with whatever appeals to their senses or habitual prejudices. The intuitive perception of their minds is less disturbed by any abstruse reasonings on causes or consequences. They learn the idiom of character, as they acquire that of language, by rote, without troubling themselves about the principles. Their observation is not the less accurate on that account, as far as it goes, for it has been well said that ‘there is nothing so true as habit.’

“There is little other power in Madame D’Arblay’s novels than that of immediate observation; her characters, whether of refinement or vulgarity, are equally superficial and confined. The whole is a question of form, whether that form is adhered to or infringed. It is this circumstance which takes away dignity and interest from her story and sentiments, and makes the one so teasing and tedious, and the other so insipid. The difficulties in which she involves her heroines are too much ‘Female Difficulties’; they are difficulties created out of nothing. The author appears to have no other idea of refinement than that it is the reverse of vulgarity; but the reverse of vulgarity is fastidiousness and affectation. There is a true and a false delicacy. Because a vulgar country Miss would answer ‘Yes’ to a proposal of marriage in the first page, Madame D’Arblay makes it a proof of an excess of refinement, and an indispensable point of etiquette in her young ladies, to postpone the answer to the end of five volumes, without the smallest reason for their doing so, and with every reason to the contrary.... The whole artifice of her fable consists in coming to no conclusion. Her ladies ‘stand so upon their going,’ that they do not go at all.... They would consider it as quite indecorous to run downstairs though the house were in flames, or to move an inch off the pavement though a scaffolding was falling. She has formed to herself an abstract idea of perfection in common behaviour, which is quite as romantic and impracticable as any other idea of the sort.... Madame D’Arblay has woven a web of difficulties for her heroines, something like the great silken threads in which the shepherdesses entangled the steed of Cervantes’ hero, who swore, in his fine enthusiastic way, that he would sooner cut his passage to another world than disturb the least of these beautiful meshes.”

The critic recognises the essential quality of Miss Burney’s work—its femininity—which he reckons, curiously enough, as a fault. But prejudices die hard and it is evident that he is not ready for the new point of view.

Evelina, 1778.
Cecilia, 1782.
Camilla, 1796.
The Wanderer, 1814.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Of Richardson, Fielding, etc.

A PICTURE OF YOUTH

It is natural, if not inevitable, that the later works of Miss Burney should have been suffered to remain unread and unremembered. Critics have told us that they only face them unwillingly, from a sense of duty; and none has ventured a second time. To-day, no doubt, readers would hesitate before the five, or more, volumes of extenuated sensibility.

And yet, though we should not ask for any reversal of this verdict, there are points of interest—at any rate in Camilla—which will repay attention. The fact is, that in this work Miss Burney has given full rein to her ideal of women, her conception of home life, and her notions about marriage: all eminently characteristic of the age, and full of suggestion as to the work of women.

We have again, as the closing paragraph reminds us, “a picture of youth,” primarily feminine; but Camilla is no mere repetition either of Evelina or Cecilia. She has even more sensibility, and a new quality of most attractive impulsiveness, which is perpetually leading her into difficulties.

There is a double contrast, or comparison, of types. The heroine’s uncle—Sir Hugh Tyrold—seems to have been conceived as a parody of the young lady herself. He flies off at a tangent—far more youthfully than she—changes his will three or four times in the first few chapters, and is constantly upsetting the whole family by most ridiculous “plans” for their happiness.

On the other hand, Edgar Mandlebert—the hero—suffers from too much caution; implanted, it is true, by his worthy tutor; but obviously “at home” in his nature. Practically the whole five volumes are concerned with the misunderstandings produced by Camilla’s hasty self-sacrifices, and his care in studying her character, without the key to her motives. It would be easy, indeed, to describe the plot as a prolonged “much ado about nothing.” The sentiments involved are palpably strained, absurdly high-flown, and singularly unbalanced. But we should remember two reasons for modifying our judgment, and hesitating before a complete condemnation.

In the first place, the ideals for women, and for all intercourse between the sexes, differ in nearly every particular from those of our own day; and, in the second, these people were almost ridiculously young. Love affairs, and often marriage, began for them when they were fifteen; and it may be that were our own sons and daughters put to the test at that age, their deeds and sentiments might surprise us considerably.

“In the bosom of her respectable family resided Camilla. Nature, with a bounty the most profuse, had been lavish to her of attractions; Fortune, with a moderation yet kinder, had placed her between luxury and indigence. Her abode was in the parsonage-house of Etherington, beautifully situated in the unequal county of Hampshire, and in the vicinity of the varied landscapes of the New Forest. Her father, the rector, was the younger son of the house of Tyrold. The living, though not considerable, enabled its incumbent to attain every rational object of his modest and circumscribed wishes; to bestow upon a deserving wife whatever her own forbearance declined not; to educate a lovely race of one son and three daughters, with that expansive propriety, which unites improvement for the future with present enjoyment.

“In goodness of heart, and in principles of piety, this exemplary couple were bound to each other by the most perfect union of character, though in their tempers there was a contrast which had scarce the gradation of a single shade to smooth off its abrupt dissimilitude. Mr. Tyrold, gentle with wisdom, and benign in virtue, saw with compassion all imperfections but his own, and there doubled the severity which to others he spared. Yet the mildness that urged him to pity blinded him not to approve; his equity was unerring, though his judgment was indulgent. His partner had a firmness of mind which nothing could shake: calamity found her resolute; even prosperity was powerless to lull her duties asleep. The exalted character of her husband was the pride of her existence, and the source of her happiness. He was not merely her standard of excellence, but of endurance, since her sense of his worth was the criterion for her opinion of all others. This instigated a spirit of comparison, which is almost always uncandid, and which here could rarely escape proving injurious. Such, at its very best, is the unskilfulness of our fallible nature, that even the noble principle which impels our love of right, misleads us but into new deviations, when its ambition presumes to point at perfection. In this instance, however, distinctness of disposition stifled not reciprocity of affection—that magnetic concentration of all marriage felicity;—Mr. Tyrold revered while he softened the rigid virtues of his wife, who adored while she fortified the melting humanity of her husband.”

Mrs. Tyrold, in fact, was a most alarming lady; and as that “sad fellow,” their son Lionel—one of “the merry blades of Oxford”—remarked with spirit, “A good father is a very serious misfortune to a poor lad like me, as the world runs; it causes one such confounded gripes of conscience for every little awkward thing one does.”

It will be seen, at once, that such surroundings promised that “repose” so “welcome to the worn and to the aged, to the sick and to the happy,” with small occasion for “danger, difficulty, and toil”—the delight of youth. Wherefore the flock, with only the son for black sheep, must quit the fold, and see something of the wicked world outside the garden. Their first venture would seem harmless enough; being no farther than over the fields to Cleves Park, just purchased by Uncle Sir Hugh, who had “inherited from his ancestors an unencumbered estate of £5,000 per annum.”

“His temper was unalterably sweet, and every thought of his breast was laid open to the world with an almost infantine artlessness. But his talents bore no proportion to the goodness of his heart, an insuperable want of quickness, and of application in his early days, having left him, at a later period, wholly uncultivated, and singularly self-formed.”

Mrs. Tyrold found occasion for further delight in the “superiority” of her husband; “though she was not insensible to the fair future prospects of her children, which seemed the probable result of this change of abode.” Both parents, indeed, prove unexpectedly “worldly” on this point; and though obviously far above the sacrifice of principle for profit, they permit their offspring to run risks—as they deem them—in their complaisance to a rich relative.

Sir Hugh is a very prodigy of indiscretion, and complicates matters by the introduction of more cousins—Indiana Lynmere, an empty-headed but “most exquisite workmanship of nature,” and her wicked brother Clermont; who were his wards. A young orphan of great wealth, Edgar Mandlebert, pupil and ward of the Rev. Tyrold, completes the group; though mischief is made, and all complications really inaugurated, by Indiana’s silly governess, Miss Margland.

Obviously there are two main issues at stake—the property of Sir Hugh, and the hand of Edgar. Miss Margland desires both for her favourite, and evinces much ingenuity in the pursuit. The worthy baronet, however, does not long hesitate about the estate. He designs it originally for Camilla, simply because she charms him most, and, with his customary naïveté, lets all the world into the secret. Then, by his own absurd thoughtlessness, he suffers the “little sister Eugenia” to catch the smallpox; and by ill-timed playfulness, lames her for life. Heart-broken with remorse, and perfectly confident in Camilla’s generous disinterestedness, he promptly compensates the poor child by making her his heiress; and, after again announcing his intentions in public, proves unexpectedly resolute in maintaining them to the end. By outsiders, however, it is occasionally still supposed that all his money will go to Camilla; and, consequently, she has some experience of fortune-hunters.

The character of Eugenia deserves notice. She is quite unlike Camilla, and the differences are no doubt accentuated by the combination of disease and deformity which, shutting her out from the obvious distractions of “youth,” afford much time for solitary reflection. Her uncle, moreover, provided her with a scholarly tutor, and to Lionel she was always “dear little Greek and Latin.” It was, indeed, this highly educated, but very youthful, paragon on whom her own family depended at every crisis, whose advice they followed, whose opinion they sought, whose approval was their standard of conduct and feeling. Younger than Camilla, she was more mature, more thoughtful and clear-headed, always decided and always right. Curiously enough, these young people seldom consulted their parents, they went to Eugenia; and she, in the most important crisis of her life, actually opposed the judgment of her elders, demanding from herself a sacrifice which even their lofty ideal did not expect or commend. They considered her mistaken, but “they knew she must do what she thought right,” and they sadly acquiesced.

Yet there were no Spartan heroics about Eugenia. She had even more “sensibility” than Camilla, far more romance, and was more easily deceived. Among other schemes of repentance for the injuries he had so innocently inflicted on her, Sir Hugh “arranged” for her to marry Clermont Lynmere, before that young gentleman had come home; and, of course, informed the whole household of his project. Such was Eugenia’s extravagant refinement in romance, that, though she could not avoid being attracted by the most obviously insincere raptures of young men in want of her fortune, one of them “kissing her hand she thought a liberty most unpardonable. She regarded it as an injury to Clermont, that would risk his life should he ever know it, and a blot to her own delicacy, as irreparable as it was irremediable.”

It is obvious that such excessive refinement proves ill-fitted to combat the unprincipled ambitions of the other sex, incited by her uncle’s generosity; and when the villain, feigning a passion well calculated to stir her fancy, threatens to blow out his brains if she refuse him, we do not read of her yielding with surprise. To her notion a promise given under any circumstances is absolutely binding; and when, undeceived, she is recommended by her pious parents to repudiate it, the heroic martyr remains steadfast, and suffers much through some volumes. Yet even in that extremity she proves a rock to her more wavering elder sister.

We have wandered too long, however, from our heroine.

“Camilla was, in secret, the fondest hope of her mother, though the rigour of her justice scarce permitted the partiality to beat even in her own breast. Nor did the happy little person need the avowed distinction. The tide of youthful glee flowed jocund from her heart, and the transparency of her fine blue veins almost showed the velocity of its current. Every look was a smile, every step was a spring, every thought was a hope, every feeling was joy! and the early felicity of her mind was without alloy.... The beauty of Camilla, though neither perfect nor regular, had an influence peculiar on the beholder, it was hard to catch its fault; and the cynic connoisseur, who might persevere in seeking it, would involuntarily surrender the strict rules of his art to the predominance of its loveliness. Even judgment itself, the coolest and last betrayed of our faculties, she took by surprise, though it was not till she was absent the seizure was detected. Her disposition was ardent in sincerity, her mind untainted with evil. The reigning and radical defect of her character—an imagination that submitted to no control—proved not any antidote against her attractions: it caught, by its force and fire, the quick-kindling admiration of the lively; it possessed, by magnetic persuasion, the witchery to create sympathy in the most serious.”

It is a picture of an ideal, stammeringly defined by Edgar: “The utmost vivacity of sentiment, all the charm of soul, eternally beaming in the eyes, playing in every feature, glowing in the complexion, and brightening every smile.”

Obviously hero and heroine are born for each other. He admires her above all women, himself has every perfection. And though Mrs. Tyrold may have “gloried in the virtuous delicacy of her daughter, that so properly, till it was called for, concealed her tenderness from the object who so deservingly inspired it,” the reader can feel no doubt, from the beginning, of her decided “partiality.”

There are two obstacles, however, between the lovers. In the first place, Edgar’s tutor had twice been deceived by women; and so acts upon his loyal pupil, by the urgent recommendation of caution and delay, that he becomes “a creature whose whole composition is a pile of accumulated punctilios”; one who “will spend his life in refining away his own happiness.” It is obvious that, left to herself, Camilla’s nature would bear the closest inspection, as even the old misanthrope ultimately admits. But Miss Margland cannot endure any rivalry with Indiana, the “beautiful vacant-looking cousin” who has been taught to consider herself irresistible, though it is not quite clear what Miss Burney would have her readers believe as to the power of beauty. At one point she declares that “a very young man seldom likes a silly wife. It is generally when he is further advanced in life that he takes that depraved taste. He then flatters himself a fool will be easier to govern.” But elsewhere we are told that

“Men are always enchanted with something that is both pretty and silly; because they can so easily please and so soon disconcert it; and when they have made the little blooming fools blush and look down, they feel nobly superior, and pride themselves in victory.... A man looks enchanted while his beautiful young bride talks nonsense; it comes so prettily from her ruby lips, and she blushes and dimples with such lovely attraction while she utters it; he casts his eyes around him with conscious elation to see her admirers, and his enviers.”

The wily governess has all the audacity of a born diplomatist. She simply informs Sir Hugh, who always believes everybody, that Edgar is “practically” engaged to her pet pupil. The old man regards the matter as settled, and, in perfect innocence, encourages her machinations to make a fact of her desire—the girl herself being flattered into an indifferent accomplice.

Now Camilla had acquired the habit, quite becoming to girlhood, of looking to Edgar, more or less consciously, for guidance through life, and of actually asking his advice on all delicate, or doubtful, occasions. Miss Margland ingeniously accuses her of trying to catch the heir by these “confidences,” and Sir Hugh, without for one moment acknowledging the possibility of Camilla having a bad motive, advises her to avoid even the appearance of jealousy, and leave Indiana a fair field. Such an appeal to her generosity, from so kind a friend, was sure of eager support; and the unfortunate girl is thus driven to seek friends against whom Edgar had warned her, and to assume the character of capriciousness and instability. This proves her Introduction to the Great World, whither Miss Burney hurries all her heroines. Like the rest, she arrives entirely unprepared, parents of those days apparently not considering either advice or guidance on such matters a part of their duty. Framed for innocent pleasure, her natural gaiety and ardent temperament lead her astray in every direction. She remains entirely unsoiled, but invariably does the wrong thing. She gets into debt, through sheer ignorance and humility; she makes friends of “doubtful” people, through pity and innocence; she even follows the advice of a worldly acquaintance, attempting to move her lover by flirting with other men. Every word and action is designed to please him: all have the contrary effect. His heart remains faithful; his reason must criticise.

At this stage of the work Miss Burney revives somewhat of her first, spontaneous, manner. The descriptions of Society—wherein “Ton, in the scale of connoisseurs in certain circles, is as much above fashion, as fashion is above fortune”—are animated and amusing. We are introduced to many new types, male and female, naïvely exaggerated perhaps in detail, but absolutely alive and cunningly varied. The “prevailing ill-manners of the leaders in the ton” astonish, no less than their brutal cowardice—in face of a girl’s danger—disgusts. Fine gentlemen, it would seem, are neither gallant nor chivalrous. The ladies, indeed, are not much better. A divinity, unequally yoked, “excites every hope by a sposo[2] properly detestable—yet gives birth to despair by a coldness the most shivering.” Less favoured beauties are equally vain, and some of them more indiscreet.

But here, as in Cecilia, our author cannot resist the indulgence of heroics. She is not satisfied with her delightful “Comedy of Manners,” with the ordinary misunderstandings and heart-burnings essential to romance. In her later volumes she plunges Camilla, and the whole Tyrold family, into the wildest distress. They lose all their money; Eugenia’s husband commits suicide; Lionel nearly murders an uncle, from whom he had expectations, by a practical joke; and Camilla acquires, by an over-elaborated series of foolish impulses, the appearance of having injured her parents beyond forgiveness. Immersed in difficulties, and not in the least understanding the circumstances, her father and mother refuse to see her; and the forsaken maiden prays for death. The whole episode is given in Miss Burney’s worst manner, tempting the reader to mere angry impatience with so much false sentiment and senseless emotion. They tremble, they faint, they weep, they see visions; we could almost fancy ourselves in Bedlam.

In the end, of course, Edgar comes back, receives an “explanation” from Camilla—written, as she supposed, on her death-bed; and promptly restores everybody to their senses and, incidentally—having plenty to spare—to prosperity.

“Thus ended the long conflicts, doubts, suspenses, and sufferings of Edgar and Camilla; who, without one inevitable calamity, one unavoidable distress, so nearly fell the sacrifice to the two extremes of Imprudence, and Suspicion, to the natural heedlessness of youth unguided, or to the acquired distrust of experience that had been wounded.”

At first sight, certainly, it would seem that we had little here of the Richardson-realism, and that Miss Burney was challenging comparison, in their own field, with such melodramatic romancists as Mrs. Radcliffe. Yet Camilla, and even Eugenia, are far more like real life than Emily St. Aubert. However extravagantly composed, they are founded on nature, whereas the older novelists worked entirely from imagination. Before Richardson (and here, of course, Mrs. Radcliffe belongs to the earlier age) the models for character were not drawn from experience and observation. There was, it would seem, a preconceived notion, and certain accepted rules, for the “make-up” of heroes, heroines, parents, villains and the rest—which are somewhat akin to the constructed ideal of abstract Beauty favoured by certain art critics. They were prepared, without very much reference to actual humanity, from mysteriously acquired recipes of virtue and vice.

We cannot find any reason to believe that Miss Burney ever worked, in her most “exalted” moments, on such a plan. She idealised from life, not from the imagination. She really believed that the young ladies of her acquaintance all aimed, more or less consciously, at that exquisite delicacy which she delighted to exhibit; and, in all probability, she was justified in her faith. Her rhapsodies are sincere; and they obviously apply to her own sentiments, shared by her contemporaries. They are—in their own very feminine fashion—reflections on reality—not creations of art by any accepted canons.

And the very exaggerated artificiality of Camilla makes it more typical—of herself and her period—than Evelina or Cecilia: and therefore more representative of Woman, when she began to write fiction for herself. The genius of her earlier work carried it some way in advance of its time; although the progress of her immediate successors is most remarkable. Camilla is the very essence of eighteenth-century girlhood; ill-mated, as they were no doubt, to “our present race of young men,” whose “frivolous fickleness nauseates whatever they can reach”; who—when they are not heroes—“have a weak shame of asserting, or even listening to what is right, and a shallow pride in professing and performing what is wrong.”

It is instructive, indeed, to observe with what apparent crudity Miss Burney has chosen to illustrate the greater purity and refinement, the superior moral standard, of women to those of men: a problem which seems to have almost vanished with Jane Austen (though we may detect it at work under the surface), and which has reappeared so prominently, after quite a new fashion, in modern literature. By the men novelists this was practically assumed without comment; but our knowledge of facts would seem to warrant the emphasis awarded the question by women in their opening campaign of the pen. Here, as elsewhere, Miss Burney was almost the first to teach us what women actually thought and felt: in marked contrast to what it had been hitherto considered becoming for them to express. She was, always, and everywhere, the mouthpiece of her sex.

And, finally, because she was not an “instructed” or professional writer, and had not studied good literature, we must recognise the real, great drawback of Camilla: its grandiloquent style. Dr. Johnson did much for English prose: his ultimate influence was towards vigour, simplicity, clearness, and common sense. But he was personally pompous, a whale in the dictionary; and those who copied him without discretion only made themselves ridiculous. It would be easy enough to find parallels in Rasselas, and elsewhere, for all the clumsy inversions and stilted antitheses of Camilla. But here we can only regret the blindness of ignorant hero-worship, and the natural, if foolish, desire to please or flatter by imitation. Miss Burney wrote Johnsonese fluently, and thereby ruined her natural powers. We cannot estimate, by her foolishness, the influence of the Dictator.

Imitation has not been, fortunately, the besetting sin of women novelists, and we may pass over this one “terrible example” without further comment.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] The “caro sposo” of Mrs. Elton.

“CECILIA” TO “SENSE AND SENSIBILITY”
(1782-1811)

In considering the women writers immediately following Miss Burney, we are confronted at the outset with a deliberate return to the methods of composition in vogue before Richardson. If Mrs. Radcliffe (1764-1823) employs, as she does, Defoe-like minuteness of detail in description, she entitles all her works “Romances,” and is fully justified in that nomenclature. “It was the cry at the period,” says her biographer, “and has sometimes been repeated since, that the romances of Mrs. Radcliffe, and the applause with which they were received, were evil signs of the times, and argued a great and increasing degradation of the public taste, which, instead of banqueting as heretofore upon scenes of passion, like those of Richardson, or of life and manners, as in the pages of Smollett and Fielding, was now coming back to the fare of the nursery, and gorged upon the wild and improbable fictions of an over-heated imagination.”

Yet the anonymous author of the Pursuits of Literature writes of some sister-novelists: “Though all of them are ingenious ladies, yet they are too frequently whining and frisking in novels, till our girls’ heads turn wild with impossible adventures. Not so the mighty magician of The Mysteries of Udolpho, bred and nourished by the Florentine muses in their sacred solitary caverns, amid the paler shrines of Gothic superstition, and in all the dreariness of enchantment: a poetess whom Ariosto would with rapture have acknowledged, as

‘... La nudrita
Damigella Trivulzia al sacro speco.’”—O.F. c. xlvi.

We fear to-day it would be difficult to find men “too mercurial to be delighted” by Richardson, “too dull to comprehend” Le Sage, “too saturnine to relish” Fielding, who would yet “with difficulty be divorced from The Romance of the Forest”: since every one of us now

“boasts an English heart,
Unused at ghosts or rattling bones to start.”

Jane Austen, of course, could never have written Northanger Abbey had she not enjoyed Mrs. Radcliffe; and we say at once that those delightfully absurd chapters in which Catherine is allowed to indulge in the most unfounded suspicions of General Tilney, are not substantially unfair to the famous wife of William Radcliffe, Esq.; as the artless conversations between Miss Morland and Miss Thorpe no doubt justly reflect the deep interest excited by her stories in the young and inexperienced. We do not readily, to-day, admire so much “exuberance and fertility of imagination”: we have little, or no, patience with “adventures heaped on adventures in quick and brilliant succession, with all the hairbreadth charms of escape or capture,” resembling some “splendid Oriental tale.”

But there can be no question that Mrs. Radcliffe achieved, in three admirable examples, a perfectly legitimate attempt—the establishment of that School of Terror inaugurated by no less brilliant a writer than Horace Walpole (in his Castle of Otranto, 1764), and seldom revived in England with any success.

It is true that very careful criticism of her methods may discover their artificiality. “Her heroines voluntarily expose themselves to situations which, in nature, a lonely female would certainly have avoided. They are too apt to choose the midnight hour for investigating the mysteries of a deserted chamber or secret passage, and generally are only supplied,” like Mr. Pickwick, “with an expiring lamp when about to read the most interesting documents.” But Emily St. Aubert is not surely designed for comparison with even that “imbecility in females” which Henry Tilney declared to be “a great enhancement of their personal charms.” She is a heroine, not a woman; and if, unlike Walpole, Mrs. Radcliffe demands, and supplies, a material explanation of all supernatural appearances, she yet allows her imagination to wander freely over the realms of superstitious alarm, wherein the reason of woman cannot presumably hold sway. Certainly, had Emily been less impulsive she would have missed many opportunities of proving herself courageous.

I cannot myself, however, entirely avoid the impression that, in their natural desire for classification, the critics have laid undue stress on Mrs. Radcliffe’s use of Mystery. In the three hundred and four, double column, pages of Udolpho there are, besides occasional voices, only three definite examples of this artifice—the waxen figure behind the veil, the moving pall, and the disappearance of Ludovico. The main plot is really no more than a spirited example of the conventional Romance-plan (in the development of which she is wittily said to have invented Lord Byron)—an involved narrative of terrible sufferings and dangers incurred by an immaculate heroine, of unmeasured tyranny and violence exerted by a melancholy villain, of protracted misunderstandings concerning the gallant hero, with hurried explanations all round in the last chapter to justify the wedding-bells.

Obviously there is no realism here. Everything depends upon conscious exaggeration: whether it be a description of “the Apennines in their darkest horrors,” or of a “gloomy and sublime” castle’s “mouldering walls”; of crime indulged without restraint, or innocence unsullied by the world. Montoni is not more inhuman in his passion than Emily in the “tender elevation of her mind.”

For despite the most solemn warnings of St. Aubert (quoted above), his Emily has far more sensibility than any of Miss Burney’s heroines, and exemplifies the dangerous doctrine that “virtue and taste are nearly the same.” She and Valancourt, indeed, were indifferent to “the frivolities of common life”; their “ideas were simple and grand, like the landscapes among which they moved”; their sentiments spontaneously “arranged themselves” in original verse.

The fact is, that Scott’s startlingly generous estimate suggests several sound conclusions: by dwelling upon the genuine poetical feeling to be observed in Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances, and the sincerity of her sympathy with nature. Though it has been remarked, with some justice, that “as her story is usually enveloped in mystery, so there is, as it were, a haze over her landscapes”; and that, “were six artists to attempt to embody the Castle of Udolpho upon canvas, they would probably produce six drawings entirely dissimilar to each other, all of them equally authorised by the printed description.”

Mrs. Inchbald (1753-1821), on the other hand, followed the new school in writing simple narratives of everyday life; but she produced little more than a pale imitation of The Man of Feeling (1771), by Henry Mackenzie, the only masculine exponent of “sensibility”; though her Simple Story (1791) and Nature and Art (1796) have been frequently reprinted. She aimed at dissecting the human heart, as Richardson had done; and there is, admittedly, a certain melodramatic, and almost decadent, charm in her work.

Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) was, certainly, the most prominent of our novelists between Fanny Burney and Jane Austen. Being a girl of eleven when Evelina was published, she lived to witness the triumph of Vanity Fair. Living beyond her eighth decade, she produced over sixty books. Having inspired Scott, on his own testimony, to the production of the Waverley Novels, she actually inaugurated, promoted, or established at least four forms of fiction more or less new to her contemporaries.

Like Fanny Burney, she owed much to the enthusiasm and example of a liberal-minded and cultured father: that Richard Lovell Edgeworth who married several of the young persons whom the author of Sandford and Merton had educated for the honour of his own hand. He and Day were notable scholastic reformers, and the influence of their innumerable theories on life and the Pedagogue, largely imported from over the Channel, is everywhere visible in Maria’s work.

Richard Lovell actually collaborated in the two volumes, inspired by Rousseau’s Émile, on Practical Education (1798), and supplied forewords of edification to that marvellous series in which she first proved the possibility of training the young idea by ethical storiettes which were not tracts. That most clumsily named Parents’ Assistant (1801), the Moral Tales of the same year, and the fascinating Frank, are still nursery classics deserving of immortality. We may not, to-day, accept without protest many of the “lessons” which they were designed to enforce; but their sympathetic insight into the nature of the child (with which recently we have been so much concerned), the attractive simplicity and dramatic interest of the direct narrative, set an example, from the very foundations of juvenile literature, which has borne plentiful fruit.

It should be noticed, moreover, in this connection that Miss Edgeworth had already produced a spirited defence of female education (Letters to Literary Ladies, 1795); while she soon followed in the footsteps of Fanny Burney by writing most lively satires on fin de siècle Society, pointed with travesties of French “naturalism,” of which the chief, perhaps, is Belinda, published in 1801; and further extended the scope of the modern novel by the introduction of the finished Short Story, under the attractive heading of Tales of Fashionable Life.

And, finally, besides again collaborating with her father in an Essay on Irish Bulls (1802), she produced that stimulating “Irish Brigade,” which banished the “stage” Patrick from literature, introduced genuine Celtic types, such as Coney, King of the Black Isles; and, by creating the “national” novel, may be regarded as the legitimate parent of what their illustrious author so modestly offered to the public as “something of the same kind for his own country.”

Although just failing everywhere to reveal genius, Miss Edgeworth reflects, with marvellous versatility, all the intellectual movements of her generation. Adopting, and adapting to her own purposes, the “form for women” set out by Miss Burney, she widened its application to the discussion of social and political problems, and was the first to make fiction a picture not only of life, but of its meaning. In fact she forestalled no less for adults, than for the young, that vast array of consciously didactic narrative which threatens, in our own time, to bury beyond revival the original, and the supreme, inspiration of Art in Literature—to give pleasure.

The humour, the pathos, the knowledge of the world, and, above all, the common sense regulating Miss Edgeworth’s work, have not secured her as permanent a popularity as she justly merits. But, if we do not, to-day, frequently read even Ormond, The Absentee, or Castle Rackrent, the occasions which gratefully recall their accomplished author to our remembrance are most astonishingly frequent.

Of Hannah More (1745-1833) most readers probably know even far less than of Maria Edgeworth; and her work can only claim notice in this place on account of the energy with which she followed Miss Edgeworth’s lead in didactic fiction. Accustomed to the society of fashionable blue-stockings (then a comparative novelty in London life), she exposed their foibles with considerable humour in private correspondence; while her plays were cheerfully staged by Garrick. But awakened, in later life, to the sin of play-going, she became known for her vigorous tracts (inspiring, by turns, the foundation of Sunday schools and of the Religious Tract Society), until she published, at sixty-four, her one novel entitled Cœlebs in Search of a Wife.

If this somewhat ponderous effusion does not altogether deserve the satirical onslaught with which Sydney Smith heralded in the Edinburgh its first appearance, we cannot claim for the author any particular skill in construction or much fidelity to real life. It is, in fact, no more than a “dramatic sermon,” and a sermon, moreover, in support of narrow-minded sectarianism. As the reviewer informs us, “Cœlebs wants a wife ... who may add materially to the happiness of his future life. His first journey is to London, where, in the midst of the gay society of the metropolis, of course, he does not find a wife; and his next journey is to the family of Mr. Stanley, the head of the Methodists, a serious people, where, of course, he does find a wife.” That is the whole story. We must submit, in the meantime, to diatribes, pronounced by the virtuous, against dancing, theatres, cards, assemblies, and frivolous conversation, until we are in danger of losing all interest in the persons of the tale.

It is enough for us, in fact, to mark a niche for Miss More in the development of women’s work; only remembering the great service she rendered her generation by a rarely sympathetic understanding of the poor as individual human beings.

A STUDY IN FINE ART
(Jane Austen, 1775-1817)

With Jane Austen we reach the centre of our subject: the establishment of the Woman’s School, the final expression of domesticity. If not, perhaps, more essentially feminine than Fanny Burney, she is more womanly. The charming girlishness of Evelina has here matured into a grown-up sisterly attitude towards humanity, which, without being either quite worldly or at all pedantic, is yet artistically composed. Whether consciously or not, she has spoken—within her chosen province—the last word for all women for all time. There is no comment on life, no picture of manners, no detail of characterisation—either humorous or sympathetic—which a man could have expressed in these precise words. Woman is openly the centre of her world; and, if men are more to her than fireside pets, she is only concerned with them as an element (or rather the chief element) in the life of women.

The comparison, already instituted, between the man-made “feminines” of Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe with Miss Burney’s “young ladies,” may be applied to Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse with added emphasis in every particular. The “woman” in them is more modern, nearer the heart of humanity, but still spontaneously of that sex.

“To say the truth,” confesses a contemporary reviewer, “we suspect one of Miss Austen’s great merits in our eyes to be the insight she gives us into the peculiarities of female character. Authoresses can scarcely ever forget the esprit de corps—can scarcely ever forget that they are authoresses. They seem to feel a sympathetic shudder at exposing naked a female mind. Elles se peignent en buste, and leave the mysteries of womanhood to be described by some interloping male, like Richardson or Marivaux, who is turned out before he has seen half the rites, and is forced to spin from his own conjectures the rest. Now from this fault Miss Austen is free. Her heroines are what one knows women must be, though one never can get them to acknowledge it. As liable ‘to fall in love first,’ as anxious to attract the attention of an agreeable man, as much taken with a striking manner, or a handsome face, as unequally gifted with constancy and firmness, as liable to have their affections biased by convenience or fashion, as we, on our part, will admit men to be. As some illustration of what we mean, we refer our readers to the conversation between Miss Crawford and Fanny (vol. iii. p. 102); Fanny’s meeting with her father (p. 199); her reflection after reading Edmund’s letter (p. 246); her happiness (good, and heroine though she be), in the midst of the miseries of all her friends, when she finds that Edmund has decidedly broken with her rival; feelings, all of them, which, under the influence of strong passion, must alloy the purest mind, but with which scarcely any authoress but Miss Austen would have ventured to temper the œtherial materials of a heroine.”

Again, Miss Burney, as we have seen, had first made it possible for a woman to write novels and be respectable. Yet even with her, authorship was something of an adventure. Her earliest manuscripts were solemnly burnt, as in repentance for frivolity, before her sorrowing sisters; needlework was ordained every morning by a not tyrannical stepmother; social duties occupied most afternoons and evenings. And if she must write, Dr. Burney was always ready enough at dictation, and any lady might act as secretary to such a father without reproach.

In the outside world, when her success was won, we can detect a similar attitude. The authoress of Evelina, indeed, was taken up everywhere and universally petted; but even literary Society never regarded her quite as one of themselves. We feel that she was always on show among them—a kind of freak, like the girl who cried to order at dinner-parties without spoiling her complexion; welcomed, but not admitted—as were actors, musicians, and others born and bred for the amusement of the great.

She herself never resumed work for its own sake after the first flush of popularity, in which she composed Cecilia. As lady-in-waiting, bored by tiresome punctilio; as Madame D’Arblay, happy in simple domesticity; her pen lay idle save when exercised by filial piety or specifically to earn money. The later novels were pure hack-work, obviously lacking in spontaneity.

It was reserved for Jane Austen, the daughter of a later generation, though actually dying before Miss Burney, to establish finally the position of woman as a professional novelist. True, she was even more domestic than her predecessor, and entirely without what we should regard as the necessary training or experience. Her family were seldom aware of the time given to work, simply because it never occurred to her that she might claim privacy or resent interruption. But they took a keen interest in the results, and evidence exists in abundance of their reading every completed volume with enthusiasm.

Of her own attitude towards her work, and of its reception with the public, there can be no doubt. She always regarded herself, and was regarded, as a professional. Circumstances might induce temporary silence, because she was domestic, modest, and affectionate; but if Jane Austen never complained—and we hear of no protest at the extraordinary delay in their appearance—we may be quite sure the novels were written for the public, by whom she felt confident one day of being read. The style is obviously spontaneous, of which the writing itself meant keen enjoyment; but the work was not done merely for the pleasure of doing it. It was her life—not because of any disappointment in love, if she experienced such, but because genius such as hers demands self-expression and commands a hearing. From the beginning, moreover, no one stopped to marvel that a woman could do so well: they judged her as an artist among her peers.

Jane Austen had none of the advantages of Miss Burney, who knew everybody, including the wig-maker next door. Apparently she took little interest in politics or social problems; and our ideals of culture suffer shock before her allusions to The Spectator, to read and admire which she holds the affectation of a blue-stocking. Admittedly she was a voracious novel-reader, but for her own pleasure merely; certainly not with any idea of historical development or artistic criticism. In all probability even her study of human nature was spontaneous and unconscious.

Yet she expected to be taken seriously. Miss Burney had ventured an apology for her art—a plea as woman to men which was daring enough for her generation, but still an apology. Miss Austen, speaking as much for the authoress of Evelina as for herself, shows far more confidence. She enlarges upon the skill and the labour involved in writing a novel, for which honour is due.[3] What she demands has been given her in full measure to overflowing. How closely her stories have wound themselves about the hearts of every successive generation, it were idle to measure or estimate. They are a part of our inheritance: appreciation is reckoned a test of culture.

In the perfection, or development, of the methods inaugurated by Samuel Richardson—particularly as applied by women-writers—she also stands supreme. She entirely avoids criminals, melodrama, or any form of excitement. She does not even demand sensibility from her common-sense heroines.

While a woman was thus placing the corner-stone to the rise of domestic realism, man accomplished a glorious revival of Romanticism. Scott was born only four years before Jane Austen: Waverley and Mansfield Park were published in the same year. Fortunately we are able to form an accurate estimate of the impression her work produced upon her great contemporary, since the earliest serious appreciation of Jane was actually written by Sir Walter, and opens with a most instructive comparison between the “former rules of the novel” and “a class of fictions which has arisen,” as he expresses it, “almost in our times.” The article appeared in the Quarterly Review, October 1815; and it is very significant for us to notice that Scott places Peregrine Pickle and Tom Jones in the “old school,” dating the new style only “fifteen or twenty years” back.

“In its first appearance, the novel was the legitimate child of the romance; and though the manners and general turn of the composition were altered so as to suit modern times, the author remained fettered by many peculiarities derived from the original style of romantic fiction. These may be chiefly traced in the conduct of the narrative, and the tone of sentiment attributed to the fictitious personages. On the first point, although

‘The talisman and magic wand were broke,
Knights, dwarfs, and genii vanish’d into smoke,’

still the reader expected to peruse a course of adventures of a nature more interesting and extraordinary than those which occur in his own life, or that of his next-door neighbour. The hero no longer defeated armies by his single sword, clove giants to the chine, or gained kingdoms. But he was expected to go through perils by sea and land, to be steeped in poverty, to be tried by temptation, to be exposed to the alternate vicissitudes of adversity and prosperity, and his life was a troubled scene of suffering and achievement. Few novelists, indeed, adventured to deny to the hero his final hour of tranquillity and happiness, though it was the prevailing fashion never to relieve him out of his last and most dreadful distress until the finishing chapters of his history; so that although his prosperity in the record of his life was short, we were bound to believe it was long and uninterrupted when the author had done with him. The heroine was usually condemned to equal hardships and hazards. She was regularly exposed to being forcibly carried off like a Sabine virgin by some frantic admirer. And even if she escaped the terrors of masked ruffians, an insidious ravisher, a cloak wrapped forcibly around her head, and a coach with the blinds [down] driving she could not conjecture whither, she had still her share of wandering, of poverty, of obloquy, of seclusion, and of imprisonment, and was frequently extended upon a bed of sickness, and reduced to her last shilling before the author condescended to shield her from persecution. In all these dread contingencies the mind of the reader was expected to sympathise, since by incidents so much beyond the bounds of his ordinary experience, his wonder and interest ought at once to be excited. But gradually he became familiar with the land of fiction, the adventures of which he assimilated not with those of real life, but with each other. Let the distress of the hero or heroine be ever so great, the reader reposed an imperturbable confidence in the talents of the author, who, as he had plunged them into distress, would in his own good time, and when things, as Tony Lumkin says, were in a concatenation accordingly, bring his favourites out of all their troubles. Mr. Crabbe has expressed his own and our feelings excellently on this subject.

‘For should we grant these beauties all endure
Severest pangs, they’ve still the speediest cure;
Before one charm be wither’d from the face,
Except the bloom which shall again have place,
In wedlock ends each wish, in triumph all disgrace.
And life to come, we fairly may suppose,
One light bright contrast to these wild dark woes.’

“In short, the author of novels was, in former times, expected to tread pretty much in the limits between the concentric circles of probability and possibility; and as he was not permitted to transgress the latter, his narrative, to make amends, almost always went beyond the bounds of the former. Now, although it may be urged that the vicissitudes of human life have occasionally led an individual through as many scenes of singular fortune as are represented in the most extravagant of these fictions, still the causes and personages acting on these changes have varied with the progress of the adventurer’s fortune, and do not present that combined plot, (the object of every skilful novelist), in which all the more interesting individuals of the dramatis personæ have their appropriate share in the action and in bringing about the catastrophe. Here, even more than in its various and violent changes of fortune, rests the improbability of the novel. The life of man rolls forth like a stream from the fountain, or it spreads out into tranquillity like a placid or stagnant lake. In the latter case, the individual grows old among the characters with whom he was born, and is contemporary,—shares precisely the sort of weal and woe to which his birth destined him,—moves in the same circle,—and, allowing for the change of seasons, is influenced by, and influences the same class of persons by which he was originally surrounded. The man of mark and of adventure, on the contrary, resembles, in the course of his life, the river whose mid-current and discharge into the ocean are widely removed from each other, as well as from the rocks and wild flowers which its fountains first reflected; violent changes of time, of place, and of circumstances, hurry him forward from one scene to another, and his adventures will usually be found only connected with each other because they have happened to the same individual. Such a history resembles an ingenious, fictitious narrative, exactly in the degree in which an old dramatic chronicle of the life and death of some distinguished character, where all the various agents appear and disappear as in the page of history, approaches a regular drama, in which every person introduced plays an appropriate part, and every point of the action tends to one common catastrophe.

“We return to the second broad line of distinction between the novel, as formerly composed, and real life,—the difference, namely, of the sentiments. The novelist professed to give an imitation of nature, but it was, as the French say, la belle nature. Human beings, indeed, were presented, but in the most sentimental mood, and with minds purified by a sensibility which often verged on extravagance. In the serious class of novels, the hero was usually

‘A knight or lover, who never broke a vow.’

And although, in those of a more humorous cast, he was permitted a licence, borrowed either from real life or from the libertinism of the drama, still a distinction was demanded even from Peregrine Pickle, or Tom Jones; and the hero, in every folly of which he might be guilty, was studiously vindicated from the charge of infidelity of the heart. The heroine was, of course, still more immaculate; and to have conferred her affections upon any other than the lover to whom the reader had destined her from their first meeting, would have been a crime against sentiment which no author, of moderate prudence, would have hazarded, under the old régime.

“Here, therefore, we have two essential and important circumstances, in which the earlier novels differed from those now in fashion, and were more nearly assimilated to the old romances. And there can be no doubt that, by the studied involution and extrication of the story, by the combination of incidents new, striking and wonderful beyond the course of ordinary life, the former authors opened that obvious and strong sense of interest which arises from curiosity; as by the pure, elevated, and romantic cast of the sentiment, they conciliated those better propensities of our nature which loves to contemplate the picture of virtue, even when confessedly unable to imitate its excellences.

“But strong and powerful as these sources of emotion and interest may be, they are, like all others, capable of being exhausted by habit. The imitators who rushed in crowds upon each path in which the great masters of the art had successively led the way, produced upon the public mind the usual effect of satiety. The first writer of a new class is, as it were, placed on a pinnacle of excellence, to which, at the earliest glance of a surprised admirer, his ascent seems little less than miraculous. Time and imitation speedily diminish the wonder, and each successive attempt establishes a kind of progressive scale of ascent between the lately deified author, and the reader, who had deemed his excellence inaccessible. The stupidity, the mediocrity, the merit of his imitators, are alike fatal to the first inventor, by showing how possible it is to exaggerate his faults and to come within a certain point of his beauties.

“Materials also (and the man of genius as well as his wretched imitator must work with the same) become stale and familiar. Social life, in our civilized days, affords few instances capable of being painted in the strong dark colours which excite surprise and horror; and robbers, smugglers, bailiffs, caverns, dungeons, and mad-houses, have been all introduced until they cease to interest. And thus in the novel, as in every style of composition which appeals to the public taste, the more rich and easily worked mines being exhausted, the adventurous author must, if he is desirous of success, have recourse to those which were disdained by his predecessors as unproductive, or avoided as only capable of being turned to profit by great skill and labour.

“Accordingly a style of novel has arisen, within the last fifteen or twenty years, differing from the former in the points upon which the interest hinges; neither alarming our credulity nor amusing our imagination by wild variety of incident, or by those pictures of romantic affection and sensibility, which were formerly as certain attributes of fictitious characters as they are of rare occurrence among those who actually live and die. The substitute for these excitements, which had lost much of their poignancy by the repeated and injudicious use of them, was the art of copying from nature as she really exists in the common walks of life, and presenting to the reader, instead of the splendid scenes of an imaginary world, a correct and striking representation of that which is daily taking place around him.

“In adventuring upon this task, the author makes obvious sacrifices, and encounters peculiar difficulty. He who paints from le beau idéal, if his scenes and sentiments are striking and interesting, is in a great measure exempted from the difficult task of reconciling them with the ordinary probabilities of life: but he who paints a scene of common occurrence, places his composition within that extensive range of criticism which general experience offers to every reader. The resemblance of a statue of Hercules we must take on the artist’s judgment; but every one can criticize that which is presented as the portrait of a friend, or neighbour. Something more than a mere sign-post likeness is also demanded. The portrait must have spirit and character, as well as resemblance; and being deprived of all that, according to Bayes, goes ‘to elevate and surprize,’ it must make amends by displaying depth of knowledge and dexterity of execution. We, therefore, bestow no mean compliment upon the author of Emma, when we say that, keeping close to common incidents, and to such characters as occupy the ordinary walks of life, she has produced sketches of such spirit and originality, that we never miss the excitation which depends upon a narrative of uncommon events, arising from the consideration of minds, manners and sentiments, greatly above our own. In this class she stands almost alone; for the scenes of Miss Edgeworth are laid in higher life, varied by more romantic incident, and by her remarkable power of embodying and illustrating national character. But the author of Emma confines herself chiefly to the middling classes of society; her most distinguished characters do not rise greatly above well-bred country gentlemen and ladies; and those which are sketched with most originality and precision, belong to a class rather below that standard. The narrative of all her novels is composed of such common occurrences as may have fallen under the observation of most folks; and her dramatis personæ conduct themselves upon the motives and principles which the readers may recognize as ruling their own and that of most of their acquaintances.”

It is manifestly clear to us, then, from these passages, that Jane Austen’s contemporaries were quite aware of her influence upon the progress of fiction; and so generous a tribute, from one whose mighty genius had set the current in other directions, must be accounted no less honourable to the critic than to the criticised.

Four years after her death (i.e. six years later) the new school is again applauded, in an admirable appreciation, by Archbishop Whately of the posthumous Persuasion and Northanger Abbey,[4] who dwells at great length upon an important distinction between the “unnatural” and the “merely improbable” in fiction.

Scott, of course, was always generous in criticism; and his striking enthusiasm for Mrs. Radcliffe and the earlier women-writers, in his Lives of the Novelists, reveals no less chivalrous gallantry than his famous tribute to Miss Edgeworth. Still it was obviously necessary for the great critic to explain the grounds of his enthusiasm; and the “more assured attitude of applause which Whateley was able to adopt, after so short an interval, may serve to witness the advance which her genius had achieved in the general estimate.”

We cannot avoid noticing, however, that neither of her contemporary masculine critics seems to have been quite happy about the ideal of womanhood which Jane Austen was certainly the first to introduce. It required courage, indeed, to conceive of a heroine without “sensibility,” and the creator of Marianne Dashwood must certainly have been perfectly conscious of the omission. It happens that Scott and Whateley were both thirty-four when these articles were written, yet each complains, after his own fashion, of the calculating prudence here revealed towards love and matrimony by the young ladies of the piece. One would have supposed that neither of them was either old enough to remember “sensibility” in real life, or young enough for idle dreaming. Clearly, however, they had a tender partiality for the old type, probably shared by their readers; although both writers assure us that young people in their day were not in fact at all addicted to the sacrifice of all for love.

Scott is certainly not justified in stating that Elizabeth was led to accept Darcy by discovering the grandeur of his estates; both because such an attitude was inconsistent with her mental independence, and because she herself jokingly suggests this explanation of the remarkable change in her sentiments towards him, to tease her sister.

But, on the other hand, Jane Austen’s heroines may fairly be called cool and calculating in comparison with the poetical maidens of romance; and we have intentionally laboured this point at some length in order to emphasise the thoroughness with which reformers in fiction discarded the many artistic ornaments formerly used by story-tellers to enhance the “pleasures of imagination.” Every convention of romance was ruthlessly abandoned.

Later developments, as we shall see, introduced other elements which partially supplied these omissions, and once more removed the novel from pure realism; but it would almost seem as if Jane Austen had deliberately set herself to prove how much it was possible to do without. She admits neither unusual mixture of society, cultured allusion, nor morbid or criminal impulses. Like her immediate predecessors, she wilfully limits the variety of character-types by strictly confining herself to her own narrow experience—her groups of character are curiously similar, her plots repeat each other: she discards every source of excitement from adventure, mystery, or melodramatic emotion; and, finally, she denies the hero or heroine any charm which may be derived from “sensibility” or romantic idealism. Hers is realism,[5] naked and unashamed; challenging comparison with life itself at every point, wholly dependent upon truthfulness to nature. Her triumph is purely artistic: the absolute fitness of expression to reveal insight, observation, sympathy, and humour; in a simple narrative of parochial affairs, composed with rare skill, faithfully reflecting everyday life and ordinary people.

From such commonplace material she has woven a spell over the imagination and secured our warm interest in characters and episodes: much as the simplicity of English landscapes will hold our affection against the claims of nature’s grandest magnificence.

Detailed analysis of her six “studies from life” will serve only to increase our wonder, and may be indulged without fear of reversed, or even qualified, judgment.

Inevitably Jane Austen scribbled in girlhood—too busily, according to her own judgment; but the printed fragments are not specially precocious, and we have no right to judge so careful an artist by work she left unfinished or rejected with deliberation, however interesting in itself.

As we all know, without having any clue to the explanation, she found herself rather suddenly, while still a young woman; and did all her work in two surprisingly brief periods—sharply separated, and each responsible for three novels, two full length and one much shorter. Pride and Prejudice, her first finished production, has every appearance of maturity, and reveals the principal qualities which characterised her to the end.

This novel, by many considered her greatest work, is primarily—like Evelina and Cecilia—a study in manners. Its aim is frankly to amuse: the dominant note is irresponsible gaiety: the appeal is more intellectual than emotional. Certainly we are interested in the story, we have considerable affection for the characters: but it does not excite passion, stimulate philosophic reflection, or stir imagination. We find here no solutions to any vexed social problem. Past mistress she is in the great art of story-telling, and a supreme stylist; yet the authoress seems always content to skim the surface of things, taking no thought of storm or fire below.

Miss Austen is no cynic: she certainly detests coarseness: yet Lydia’s fall and its consequences, round which any modern novelist would have centred the whole picture, is handled with something very like levity. We can scarcely avoid amazement at the astonishingly vulgar attitude of Mrs. Bennet or at Mary’s appalling priggishness on the occasion: but such serious thoughts do not retain us long. In reality we are chiefly interested in the possible effects of the girl’s folly upon her elder sisters—will it, or will it not, separate them for ever from the men they love? It is only a few quiet words of unselfish sympathy from Jane, easily forgotten by most of us, that reveal the sentiments of the authoress on such questions—with which, apparently, she holds that fiction has little concern.

Primarily, however, we are attracted by Pride and Prejudice as a work of art. The unfailing humour and pointed wit, the marvellous aptness of every polished phrase, hold us spellbound. The very first sentence plunges us right into the heart of affairs: every incident or dialogue, to the closing page, follows without pause or digression, clear and firm as crystal. No trace of obscurity or hesitation blurs the gay scene: every character is vividly, and individually, alive. Yet how simple, almost commonplace, the material: how parochial the outlook. We have here no mystery or melodrama, no psychology or local colour. Miss Austen’s young ladies have absolutely no interests in life except “the men,” however superior their manners and instincts to the egregious frivolity of Mrs. Bennet. They are the normal heroines of a conventional love-story; with the usual surroundings—a handsome hero or two, some tiresome relatives, a confidante, a mild villain, and varied comic relief. It has been said further that Miss Austen’s ideal of a gentleman was deficient, since Darcy’s insolence betrays lack of breeding: and, certainly, no Elizabeth of to-day would even temporarily be deceived or attracted by so common an adventurer as Wickham.

At a first glance, indeed, it might seem that Miss Austen depended entirely for her effects upon the creation of oddities. Reflecting on Lady Catherine and Mr. Collins, touching perfection, we may well fancy that we have surprised her secret—the impulse of her achievement, the cause of our own enthusiasm. This, however, is but a hasty and superficial impression. To begin with, she does not concentrate, either in wit or humour, upon these figures of fun: and, in the second place, she has powers quite other than the mirth-provoking. Though grammatically not above reproach, she seems always to use the right word by instinct, hitting every nail full on the head, never wasting a syllable. The art nowhere obtrudes itself: her most skilfully polished phrases appear natural and fluent, just what her characters must have said in real life, to express precisely their thoughts and feelings. Faultlessly neat and compact, her style is yet daring, vigorous, and thoroughly alive.

Similar qualities appear in her delineation of character. Always knowing her own mind, and going straight to the point: there is no vagueness in outline, no uncertainty anywhere. Jane Bennet could never have said or done just what came most naturally from Elizabeth; Darcy shared no thought or deed with his best friend: less prominent persons are as firmly, if less fully, individualised. The incidents, moreover, however trifling, are well varied; the plot has ample movement—once those concerned in it have won our sympathies. Assuredly Miss Austen’s aim is not strenuous; but it is direct, vigorous, and clear-headed. And where she aims, she hits.

Sense and Sensibility reveals the very same method and the reappearance of many similar types, applied to an entirely new story in which no interest or situation repeats those of the earlier book. With her daring indifference to originality in the mechanical construction of a plot, Miss Austen once more centres her story round two sisters, more widely diverse in temperament, indeed, than Jane and Elizabeth, but no less everything to each other. Their mother, after the way of parents in these novels, is as foolish as Mrs. Bennet, though far more lovable. Willoughby is Wickham over again, with a fancy for accomplishments. The tragi-comedy introduced by Lucy Steele, more essentially vulgar than any of the Bennets, Mrs. Palmer’s candid frivolity, and the languid elegance of Lady Middleton (later perfected in Lady Bertram), provide abundant occasion for laughter; though no one figure of absurdity stands out so strongly as those of the earlier novel. On the other hand, Miss Austen has nowhere exposed a character more trenchantly by one short dialogue than in the discussion between Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood about “what he could do for” his widowed mother and orphaned sisters. It were surely impossible for selfish hypocrisy to go further; and the subtle touches by which the wife reveals herself leader of the pair, must afford us the keenest enjoyment.

But this tale of Marianne and her Willoughby has one element entirely absent from Pride and Prejudice, and never again attempted by Jane Austen. It may be said to border on melodrama. The young people’s ingenuous revels in emotion, whether of joy or grief, surprise one in so balanced a writer, and reveal powers we should not otherwise have suspected. Marianne, indeed, is the very personification of that sensibility, so dear to “elegant females” of the old world, so foreign to modern ideals. Having chosen her type, Miss Austen would seem determined to show how far she could go in this direction without distorting humanity. To the more conventional Miss Burney, sensibility was a grace essential in heroines. She is its acknowledged exponent, and compels us, despite prejudice, to recognise its real charm. But neither Evelina nor Cecilia exhibits so much naïveté as Marianne, such tempestuous abandon, such a fiery glow; yet we can read of her with equal patience, we can love her no less. She is saved, for us, by her genuine affection for “sensible” Eleanor, and her unselfish devotion to a mother who seems even younger and more foolish than herself. And Willoughby’s temperament fits her like a glove. His wooing, his wickedness, and his repentance belong to a generation before Miss Austen’s. Through this couple she triumphs in otherwise unexplored regions.

Northanger Abbey has very much the appearance of juvenile effort, possibly recast in maturity. If not actually written in girlhood, it must be regarded as the flower of a true holiday spirit, blossoming in sheer fun. Fresh from the excited perusal of some novel by the terrifying Anne Radcliffe, whom I believe Miss Austen enjoyed as keenly as her own Catherine, she must have thrown herself into the composition of this delightful parody, just to renew its thrills, to linger over its absurdities. It is all pure farce, exaggeration cheerfully unrestrained. The irrepressible Arabella belongs to Miss Burney: her boasting brother should hang in the same gallery. Dear, foolish Catherine’s idle imaginings about General Tilney were never meant to resemble nature. Henry could scarcely have forgiven them, had he taken her quite seriously. Moreover, having one parody in hand, Miss Austen gaily embarks on yet another, no less irresponsible and spontaneous. Catherine is Evelina in miniature; the real ingénue whose country breeding exposes her to the most diverting distresses in a Society amazingly mixed. Hovering between Thorpes and Tilneys, like Evelina between Mirvans and Branghtons, she enters each circle with the same innocence, enthusiasm, and naïveté. Miss Austen’s sly boast of originality in allowing her heroine to fall in love without stopping to ascertain “the gentleman’s feelings,” is but gentle raillery at a similar presumption in Miss Burney. Certainly Orville, no less than Tilney, was led on to serious thoughts of matrimony by the simple-minded revelation of a pretty girl’s partiality.

Where a laugh lurks behind every sentence, we need not expect the special “studies in humour” which stand out, everywhere, in the more serious stories. Yet General Tilney (later perfected in Sir Walter Elliot) is a finished sketch: while John Thorpe, who never opens his lips without betraying himself; and Arabella, whether in pursuit of the “two young men” or quizzing the naughty Captain, were hard to beat.

Nowhere, in all her work, has Miss Austen concentrated such pungent sarcasm as in the condescending explanation of how much folly reasonable men prefer in lovely women.

“The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable, and too well informed themselves, to desire anything more in woman than ignorance.”

Do not the smooth words sting?

Approaching the second group, we look naturally, and not in vain, for evidence of maturity and development. Miss Austen does not, in fact, make any attempt to enlarge her sphere, to widen her outlook, to handle more strenuous emotion. But her plots, still based on parochial gossip, are more varied and complex: she works with a larger number of characters; actually perfecting some types already familiar, and introducing us to many a new acquaintance. Above all, her dramatis personæ are no longer fixed and defined at their first entrance: they grow with the story, often surprising us at last by qualities, no doubt dormant from the beginning, and never strained or inconsistent, but only possible to development through experience.

Emma obviously invites comparison with Pride and Prejudice. The two heroines have long shared almost equally the position of a most popular favourite: one or other of the two books is almost universally judged her best. The charms of Emma and Harriet are more naturally diverse because they are not sisters: yet in the accidents of intimacy, mutual confidence, and common interests they form a basis for the plot precisely similar to that of the sisters in Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility, not greatly differing from those in Mansfield Park or Persuasion. Mr. Elton, the very pink of pretentious vulgarity, recalls Lydia and Lucy Steele: her caro sposo eclipses Mr. Collins on his own ground. Miss Bates the garrulous, and Mr. Woodhouse the fussy, varied examples of the eternal bore, are formidable rivals, if not conquerors, of the inimitable Lady Catherine. Here we have “characters” in greater abundance, almost more finished in fuller detail.

Advance is more obvious, however, in the introduction of such independent family groups as the Westons, the Martins, the John Knightleys, and the Eltons: in the presence of a full-grown secondary plot—“The Fairfax Mystery,” as we might call it: and in the heroine’s development through experience. A secret engagement is, in itself, new kind of material for Jane Austen to handle: well calculated to exercise her delicate command of dialogue. It lends particular interest to this novel, however simple the intrigue compared with more modern examples, however foreign to our own conceptions the “sense of sin” thereby engendered in Jane Fairfax. Young Churchill’s spirited conduct of the affair is a perpetual delight, certainly not least for its unintentional humbling of “the great Miss Woodhouse”: though his insinuations about Mr. Dixon (like Darcy’s rudeness) exceed the licence permitted a gentleman, however spoilt and high-spirited.

We have already noted the popularity of Emma, but, in this unlike Elizabeth, she has her detractors. Some find her too managing, self-centred, and “superior” for charm. Admittedly she is a matchmaker, far less refined than she imagines herself: her rudeness to Miss Bates is difficult to pardon. But, as Knightley alone had the wit to recognise, Harriet’s innocent folly encouraged her worst qualities, and Emma’s repentance is sincere, bearing good fruit. To the end she is herself indeed; but how different a self—standing witness to the powers of character in bringing out the best of us. Having played with fire, she learnt her lesson, and so we may leave her, no less marvelling than she at the workings of what little Harriet was pleased to call her heart; admiring, as all must, Jane Austen’s finished study of that engaging “Miss.”

Mansfield Park, probably, is the least popular of the novels—on account of its heroine. Fanny Price has her partisans, but can never become a general favourite, until we again idealise humility in woman. Accepting, without a murmur, the most unreasonable and most exacting demands of all her “betters”; meekly grateful, to the point of servility, if Edmund bestows on her a kind word; she stands before us condemned by every code accepted to-day.

Yet Fanny, reversing the process in Emma, acquires self-confidence with years, and actually learns to play the heroine in adversity. The novel contains Miss Austen’s first, and last, picture of the great world beyond parish boundaries: it deals, successfully, with greater contrasts in social status than she ever attempted before or since. Lady Bertram, no less than Mrs. Norris, fairly eclipses all former achievements in character study.

Its crowded canvas, indeed, demands notice in detail. Sir Thomas neglects his family much as did Mr. Bennet, and suffers more serious punishment. The “villain” is replaced by Henry and Miss Crawford, of the world, worldly: figuring at first as very wholesome instruments of distraction to a stiff family circle; but ingeniously convicted, in touch with realities, of serious moral depravity. Their presence, however, reveals new power in the authoress, and considerably enlivens the scene. They do much towards the development of Fanny.

No two characters, on the other hand, could be more profoundly diverse than those of Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris: yet they fit each other without friction, and it were hard indeed to say which is more perfectly drawn. A woman more utterly devoid of feeling or lacking in common sense than the former, it is impossible to conceive. The mere hint of responsibility towards anyone or anything would have shattered her nerves completely; and no emergency, of joy or grief, ever taught her to face the exertion of making up her own mind for herself on the most trivial question. Yet there is no exaggeration. She is perfectly natural, not without charm, an ornament to the family circle whom all would miss. For Mrs. Norris, the intolerable busybody, it has been suggested that Miss Austen owed something directly to personal experience. Was this her revenge for much silent endurance? Certainly so much concentrated scorn, so stern a portrait seems to imply animus. Gentle, tender, and sympathetic by nature, was she at times lashed to fury by the cruel inanity of village types? Mrs. Elton, Miss Bates, and Mr. Collins may, in a less degree, have been similarly inspired. If it be so, verily they have their reward.

The central motive in Mansfield Park is more complex than heretofore: its scenes more varied. The whole episode of Fanny’s visit to her struggling parents, and their squalid home, introduces an aspect of life elsewhere ignored, shows us humanity unrefined. The work is alive and vigorous, not altogether foreign to modern realism. Coming, moreover, from such uncongenial, and to them unfamiliar, surroundings; bred to hard work and hard times; cousin Fanny brings a new element into the lives of the elegant Miss Bertrams, our usual couple of sisters; who, again, are destined to further awakening from the manners and experience of Mary Crawford.

Finally, we have here the nearest approach to a so-called “social problem” ever handled by Jane Austen, and a thoroughly serious picture of punishment. It may seem hard to all of us, and modern casuists would certainly declare it unjust, that Maria should suffer so much more than Julia, who had no more principle, but less opportunity. In this matter, however, Miss Austen is uncompromising. Of the two Maria was more spoilt—by Mrs. Norris, more exposed to temptation; and actually committed sin. Therefore she must expect punishment. Julia proved herself equally cold-hearted and selfish; but by luck, neither through wisdom nor goodness, she kept within the code—and was forgiven.

Miss Austen does not let off the man altogether; for it is quite clear that Henry Crawford lost Fanny, and, with her, his best chance for happiness. But Maria lost everything; and so, the authoress seems to imply, it must be always. There is no hint of mercy, no chance for retrievement, in one of the sternest decrees of Fate that could overtake a woman—perpetual imprisonment with her aunt!

“Shut up together with little society, on one side no affection, on the other no judgment, it may reasonably be supposed that their tempers became their mutual punishment.”

Justice, indeed, hath fair play with Mrs. Norris. May we not whisper—Poor Maria!

Persuasion, Miss Austen’s last work and perhaps her finest, reveals maturity in other ways. No longer than Northanger Abbey, it has neither the complexity nor the crowded canvas distinguishing others of the second group. It is written throughout in a minor key, without one outstanding comic “character.” But, on the other hand, its construction is singularly compact, its emotions have a new depth, sincerity, and tenderness. Anne Elliot can never rival Elizabeth or Emma; though she is no less “superior” to her own family, and has in reality more character. Here our appreciation and our sympathies are emotional rather than intellectual. We feel with her far more than with them. Though never recognised in her own circle, as were all Miss Austen’s heroines save Fanny Price, she dominates the story more than any. Persuasion, in fact, is a study in character, such as its authoress had never before attempted. No more, if indeed actually less, sensational than its predecessors, the whole scheme moves below the surface. It holds us more by feeling and atmosphere than by incident. We experience a similar delight in the perfectly turned phrases, the finished dialogue, and the neat characterisation; but here are no figures of fun, no animated social functions, no clash of types. We may smile, indeed, at Sir Walter Elliot or at the family of Uppercross; but the humour, however subtle and permeating, does not anywhere prevail over deeper emotion.

Certainly we note that Miss Austen still seeks out no new material, depends on no more startling situation. Anne’s happiness and misery alike arise, as did Jane’s and Elizabeth’s, from a refinement to which every other member of her family was absolutely blind. The natural understanding between two sisters is destroyed, as between Julia and Maria, by rivalry for the one eligible visitor to the neighbourhood; though here with no permanently disastrous results. The naïvely conceived villain of the first group has become—again as in Mansfield Park—an accomplished man of the world, with no sister indeed to further his perfectly honourable designs on the heroine, but, in the last event, not lacking a female accomplice. Its most striking effect in local colour, the glowing picture of naval types, was foreshadowed in William Price: though Admiral and Mrs. Croft admittedly stand high in Miss Austen’s gallery of character-studies. Society, as in Northanger Abbey, is located at Bath.

Yet nowhere has she attempted, with any approach to a like depth of feeling or earnestness, so much philosophy on life, so searching an analysis of human nature, as in the remarkable conversation on faithfulness, as severally exhibited by men and women, which artistically produces a permanent understanding between hero and heroine.

“Oh!” cried Anne eagerly to Captain Harville, “I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures. I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as—if I may be allowed the expression—so long as you have an object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.”

This is the text of the whole novel, woven with subtlety into its very fabric, inspiring each thought, each word, though never obtruding. Persuasion is neither a sermon nor a pamphlet. Its author assuredly holds no brief for woman, brings no charge against man. Yet here she speaks for her sex. Of what she has seen and felt it would appear that she could no longer remain silent.

Jane Austen reveals herself in her last message to posterity.

Sense and Sensibility, 1811.
Pride and Prejudice, 1813.
Mansfield Park, 1814.
Emma, 1816.
Northanger Abbey, 1818.
Persuasion, 1818.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Both passages are quoted on [page 129].

[4] Also in the Quarterly, 1821.

[5] It is scarcely necessary, perhaps, to remark that the word “realism” is used, here and elsewhere, without any reference to the limited significance it has recently acquired. Realism, of course, really means truthfulness to life, including imagination, faith, poetry, and the ideal; and not a photographic reproduction of certain unpleasant, more or less abnormal, phases of human nature.

A “MOST ACCOMPLISHED COQUETTE”

In spite of the almost universal inclination to pass over Jane Austen’s “minor” works without serious comment, we are ourselves strongly disposed to consider Lady Susan of considerable importance.

The early compositions, if sprightly, are not precocious: the cancelled chapter of Persuasion—replaced only eleven months before her death by chaps. x. and xi.—remains an interesting record of what would have fully satisfied a less careful artist; and the description—with extracts—which Mr. Austen-Leigh has given us of the novel begun on 27th January 1817 and continued until the 17th of March,[6] does not contain body enough for confident anticipation: i.e. of detail. There is, however, no reason for dreading any decline in artistic power.

Water-marks of 1803 and 1804 on the original manuscript prove The Watsons to have been written between her two periods of productive activity; and it is not likely that definite evidence will now transpire in explanation of its having been left unfinished: unless we accept Mr. Austen-Leigh’s somewhat fastidious conclusion—

“that the author became aware of the evil of having placed her heroine too low, in such a position of poverty and obscurity as, though not necessarily connected with vulgarity, has a sad tendency to degenerate into it; and therefore, like a singer who has begun on too low a note, she discontinued the strain. It was an error of which she was likely to become more sensible, as she grew older, and saw more of society: certainly she never repeated it by placing the heroine of any subsequent work under circumstances likely to be unfavourable to the refinement of a lady.”[7]

Her nephew further remarks that “it could not have been broken up for the purpose of using the materials in another fabric”; although, in his opinion, a resemblance between Mr. Robert Watson and Mr. Elton is “very discernible.” We might also observe that Mr. Watson appears to have taken his “basin of gruel” as regularly as Mr. Woodhouse; while, on the other hand, Lord Osborne’s affected superiority to dancing recalls Darcy. Miss Watson’s theories on life and marriage are particularly characteristic:

“I would rather do anything than be a teacher at a school. I have been at school, Emma, and know what a life they lead; you never have. I should not like marrying a disagreeable man any more than yourself; but I do not think there are many very disagreeable men; I think I could like any good-humoured man with a comfortable income. I suppose my aunt brought you up to be rather refined.”

Emma Watson, in fact, like all Jane Austen’s heroines, shines by comparison with the rest of her family.

Lady Susan, unlike any of the stories mentioned above, is obviously complete and finished. “Her family have always believed it to be an early production”; but we cannot conjecture why it was laid aside and never published by her. It is, however, an “experiment”—never repeated; and very possibly Jane Austen did not feel moved to revise what evidently had not satisfied her own standard of perfection.

For us, however, its striking dissimilarity to the six recognised “works,” and its unique position in the development of fiction, are of peculiar interest. To begin with, it belongs to the old “picaresque” school of fiction, seldom popular in England, though practised with considerable vigour by Defoe, and once revived by Thackeray in a work of genius—Barry Lyndon.

It may, perhaps, be considered an exaggeration to call the heroine a villain; and certainly Jane Austen entirely avoids the sordid material of criminal adventure (not scorned by Thackeray); which is the recognised foundation of ordinary picaresque work. But the essential characteristic remains prominent. The good people are comparatively colourless; our interest centres around Lady Susan, and it is on her that the author has devoted her most careful work. Moreover, it should not be overlooked that Lady Susan does contemplate, and actually instigate—in refined language—a course of action which may fairly be called criminal. The confidante, Mrs. Johnson—a recognised appendage to villainy—receives the following significant hint:

“Mainwaring is more devoted to me than ever; and were we at liberty, I doubt if I could resist even matrimony offered by him. This event, if his wife live with you, it may be in your power to hasten. The violence of her feelings, which must wear her out, may easily be kept in irritation. I rely on your friendship for this.”

The quiet audacity of this paragraph is really astounding; and just because no other word in all the forty-one letters contains so much as a hint at anything beyond unblushing effrontery and reckless lying, we regard it, without hesitation, as the keynote of Jane Austen’s method, and the declaration of her aim. Only a villain could possibly have written these words; only a genius could have refrained from giving her away on some other occasion.

Superficially, Lady Susan is no worse than a merry widow, given to man conquest, perfectly indifferent—if not contemptuous—towards the wives or the fiancées of her victims. In this matter, indeed, her enemies complain that “she does not confine herself to that sort of honest flirtation which satisfies most people, but aspires to the more delicious gratification of making a whole family miserable.” During the first months of widowhood she had determined on “discretion” and being “as quiet as possible”:—“I have admitted no one’s attentions but Mainwaring’s. I have avoided all general flirtation whatever; I have distinguished no creature besides, of all the numbers resorting hither, except Sir John Martin, on whom I bestowed a little notice, in order to detach him from Miss Mainwaring; but, if the world could know my motive there they would honour me”;—the fact being that she wanted the man for her daughter.

This “most accomplished coquette in England” is described with some fullness by a sister-in-law who had every reason to think ill of her.

“She is really excessively pretty; however you may choose to question the allurements of a lady no longer young, I must, for my own part, declare that I have seldom seen so lovely a woman as Lady Susan. She is delicately fair, with fine grey eyes and dark eyelashes; and from her appearance one would not suppose her more than five and twenty; though she must in fact be ten years older. I was certainly not disposed to admire her, though always hearing she was beautiful; but I cannot help feeling that she possesses an uncommon union of symmetry, brilliancy, and grace. Her address to me was so gentle, frank, and even affectionate, that, if I had not known how much she has always disliked me for marrying Mr. Vernon, and that we had never met before, I should have imagined her an attached friend. One is apt, I believe, to connect assurance of manner with coquetry, and to expect that an impudent address will naturally attend an impudent mind; at least, I myself was prepared for an improper degree of confidence in Lady Susan; but her countenance is absolutely sweet, and her voice and manner winningly mild. I am sorry it is so, for what is this but deceit? Unfortunately, one knows her too well. She is clever and agreeable, has all that knowledge of the world which makes conversation easy, and talks very well, with a happy command of language, which is too often used, I believe, to make black appear white.”

Such being the lady’s own manners and sentiments, we are fully prepared for her satirical references to her daughter:

“I never saw a girl of her age”—she was sixteen—“bid fairer to be the sport of mankind. Her feelings are tolerably acute, and she is so charmingly artless in their display as to afford the most reasonable hope of her being ridiculous, and despised by every man who sees her. Artlessness will never do in love-matters; and that girl is born a simpleton who has it either by nature or affectation.”

It is hardly necessary to add that Lady Susan has no desire, or ambition, in life beyond universal admiration. She is “tempted” indeed, but does not on one occasion lose her head: and we cannot feel that she was even exactly pre-eminent in her practice. It does not appear that she quite succeeded in ever enjoying the fruits of victory. Miss Austen has not drawn for us a really “cunning” coquette. Lady Susan subdued men, but she could seldom hold them; and on no occasion does she conquer “circumstances,” i.e., other women.

There may be, obviously, three explanations of this fact. Either Jane Austen was lacking in the more robust humour of Thackeray and his predecessors, who seem to revel in the gaiety of the heartless; or she recognised the limitations of country life, where the artificial can never prosper for long; or she had, in her own quiet way, too much principle to countenance, even in fiction, any permanent happiness for the wicked.

However it be, the result is unique. Lady Susan stands alone as a heroine. As we have seen, the full depths of her criminality lurk beneath the surface: her power is rather hinted at than described. It is only on looking back over the accumulation of slight touches and chance words that we realise her astounding insincerity, her absolute lack of feeling, or the brilliance of her superficial attractiveness. It is a very short book, containing few characters and practically no events; yet we are startled, on reflection, at its unsparing picture of the incalculable amount of mischief that may be done by sheer empty-headedness, entirely without strong feeling or passion; and of the incredible isolation in which such a character must always live.

Lady Susan injures, in some degree, literally every person named in the whole story. She has not a friend in the world. In reality, perhaps, the last consideration indicates most clearly the virtue in Miss Austen’s characterisation. It is not once even mentioned, and, consequently, arouses no remark. We must deduct from it our own observation. But, inasmuch as never for one instant does a single thought for anyone but herself cross the mind of Lady Susan, so never does anyone else show one spark of affection for her. Mrs. Johnson, obviously, was governed by interested motives, and frankly abandons her at the first serious danger of “the consequences” to herself. The kind of devotion she inspired in men had no affinity to friendship, respect, consideration, or unselfishness. The closing scene is described with a cutting brevity, that recalls Miss Austen’s dismissal of Maria Rushworth and Mrs. Norris.

She married the man designed for her daughter—for an establishment: “Whether Lady Susan was or was not happy in her second choice, I do not see how it can ever be ascertained; for who would take her assurance of it on either side of the question? The world must judge from probabilities; she had nothing against her but her husband, and her conscience.”

As we have noticed before, Miss Austen seldom obtrudes her opinions, but they are occasionally implied. And, on such occasions, they are unhesitating. We find in her no doubt, no compromise—we might almost say no charity—about a few questions of ultimate morality.

On the whole, however, we cannot claim for Lady Susan all those perfections of style associated with the genius of its author. Save for a few turns of phrase, of which we have quoted the most significant, it has little of her pointed epigram or subtle humour. The language is equally finished and inevitable, but there is neither sparkle nor gaiety. We miss the dialogue and the delicate variety in characterisation. It would be hazardous, indeed, to suppose that anyone could have “discovered” Jane Austen from Lady Susan; but, knowing her other work, we can detect the mastery.

In conclusion, it is worth noticing that she has here given us some insight into the constancy of man.

Reginald de Courcy had been a victim of Lady Susan’s. After her second marriage, her daughter

“Frederika was fixed in the family of her uncle and aunt till such time as Reginald de Courcy could be talked, flattered, and finessed into an affection for her which, allowing leisure for the conquest of his attachment to her mother, for his abjuring all future attachments, and detesting the sex, might be reasonably looked for in a twelvemonth. Three months might have done it in general, but Reginald’s feelings were no less lasting than lively.”

It will be remembered that Miss Austen is less explicit about Edmund Bertram:

“I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people. I only entreat everybody to believe that exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier, Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and became as anxious to marry Fanny as Fanny herself could desire.”

On the other hand, Marianne Dashwood required two years to conquer her devotion to Willoughby in favour of Colonel Brandon; but then Miss Austen has claimed for her sex, through Anne Elliot, “the privilege of loving longest, when existence, or when hope, is gone.”

FOOTNOTES:

[6] She died 18th July 1817.

[7] It may surely be questioned whether this remark quite allows for the home of Fanny Price.

PARALLEL PASSAGES

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to name an author of genius even approximately equal to Jane Austen’s who owed so little as she to any deliberate study of literary models or conscious attention to the laws of style. Concerning her personal character and private interests we know, indeed, surprisingly little; but it is certain, on the one hand, that she was not in touch with the men and women of letters among her contemporaries, and, on the other, that her family circle did not practise the gentle art of criticism. The further assumption that she had thought little, and read less, about the theory of her art, is justified by the absence of any such references in her letters, and by her simple ideas of construction, as developed in the advice to a young relative who was attempting to follow her example:

“You are now collecting your people delightfully, getting them exactly into such a spot as is the delight of my life. Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on.”

Jane Austen, however, read novels with keen enjoyment: Northanger Abbey is in part an avowed burlesque of Mrs. Radcliffe, and we can discover, in the language of Shakespearean commentary, the “originals” for several of her plots and persons in the works of Fanny Burney.

Such an investigation, indeed, seems to have been almost courted by the author herself when she borrowed a title from a chance phrase of her sister-novelist’s, for a story with a somewhat similar plot, developed, among other coincidences, in two closely parallel scenes. When at length, after a series of cruel misfortunes, the hero and heroine of Cecilia were permitted to console each other, an onlooker thus pointed the moral of their experience: “The whole of this unfortunate business has been the result of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.”

There must have been a day, about twenty years after they were written, when these words assumed, in Jane Austen’s eyes, a sudden significance. She had read them before, probably many times, but on this occasion they proved no less than an inspiration. Within her desk, on which perhaps the favourite volume was then lying, lay the neatly written manuscript of a tale constructed, in some measure, on the lines of this very Cecilia. She had called it First Impressions. Would not Pride and Prejudice be a better name? It was certainly a happy thought.[8]

Now Delvile, like Darcy, fell in love against his family instincts, and, with an equally offensive condescension, discoursed at length on his struggles between pride and passion to the young lady he desired to honour with his affection. He, too, resisted long, yielded in the end, and was forgiven. His mother’s appeal to Cecilia was as violent, and almost as impertinent, as Lady Catherine’s to Elizabeth.

A close comparison of these two parallel scenes will serve at once to show Jane Austen’s familiarity with the copy and her originality of treatment. Darcy, like Delvile, is not “more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride.” But he has overcome his scruples and offers his hand, in confidence of its being accepted, to one who dislikes and despises him. Delvile, on the other hand, wishes merely to explain the reasons that have induced him to deny himself the dangerous solace of the “society” of one whom he believes to be entirely indifferent to him, and to excuse the occasional outbursts of tenderness into which he has been betrayed in unguarded moments. He does not complain of “the inferiority of her connections,” but of the clause in her uncle’s will by which her future husband is compelled to take her name. Cecilia had been puzzled by his uncertain behaviour, but, believing him only cautious from respect to his parents, had permitted herself to love him.

Mrs. Delvile again, like Lady Catherine, based her appeal on the “honour and credit” of the young man she was so anxious to release; but her insolence was tempered by affection, and disguised by high-sounding moral sentiments. Cecilia was softened, as Elizabeth had not been, by a sense of gratitude for past kindness and by a strained notion of respect for the older lady. Mrs. Delvile, except in her pride, is intended to inspire us with genuine respect; Lady Catherine is always treated with amused contempt.

There are other instances—less familiar, but equally striking—in which Miss Austen made use, in her own inimitable fashion, of characters, phrases, and situations in Evelina and Cecilia.

Mr. Delvile, the pompous and foolish man of family, reappears in Sir Walter Elliot of Persuasion, and General Tilney of Northanger Abbey. Cecilia could never determine “whether Mr. Delvile’s haughtiness or his condescension humbled her most,” and he became “at length so infinitely condescending, with intention to give her courage, that he totally depressed her with mortification and chagrin.” Catherine Morland always found that “in spite of General Tilney’s great civilities to her, in spite of his thanks, invitations, and compliments, it had been a release to get away from him.”

Cecilia’s friendship for Henrietta Belfield resembles Emma’s for Harriet Smith. She was ever watching the state of her young friend’s heart; now soliciting her confidence, and again, from motives of prudence, rejecting it. For a time both girls are in love with the hero, and Henrietta dreams as fondly and as foolishly over Delvile’s imagined partiality as Harriet did over Knightley’s. Neither heroine has any thought of resigning her lover to her friend, or “of resolving to refuse him at once and for ever, without vouchsafing any motive, because he could not marry them both.”

The following conversation between Mr. Gosport and Miss Larolles recalls Miss Steele’s persistence in laughing at herself about the doctor (Sense and Sensibility), and Tom Bertram’s affected belief that Miss Crawford was “quizzing him and Miss Anderson” (Mansfield Park).

Gosport attacks Miss Larolles on a rumour now current about her, and, after some skirmishing, confesses to having heard that “she had left off talking.”

“‘Oh, was that all,’ cried she, disappointed. ‘I thought it had been something about Mr. Sawyer, for I declare I have been plagued so about him, I am quite sick of his name.’

“‘And for my part, I never heard it! So fear nothing from me on his account.’

“‘Lord, Mr. Gosport, how can you say so! I am sure you must know about the festino that night, for it was all over the town in a moment.’

“‘What festino?’

“‘Well, only conceive how provoking! Why, I know nothing else was talked of for a month.’”

This is the Miss Larolles who haunted the mind of Anne Elliot, in Persuasion, when she moved to the end of a form at the concert, in order to be sure of not missing Captain Wentworth:

“She could not do so without comparing herself with Miss Larolles, the inimitable Miss Larolles, but still she did it, and not with much happier effect.”

Here is the passage in question: “Do you know,” says Miss Larolles,

“Mr. Meadows has not spoke one word to me all the evening! though I am sure he saw me, for I sat at the outside on purpose to speak to a person or two, that I knew would be strolling about; for if one sits on the inside there’s no speaking to a creature you know; so I never do it at the opera, nor in the boxes at Ranelagh, nor anywhere. It’s the shockingest thing you can conceive, to be made sit in the middle of these forms, one might as well be at home, for nobody can speak to one.”

The singularly unselfish affection of Mrs. and Miss Mirvan for Evelina, never clouded by envy of her superior attractions, finds its echo in the experience of Jane Fairfax:

“The affection of the whole family, the warm attachment of Miss Campbell in particular, was the more honourable to each party, from the circumstance of Jane’s decided superiority, both in beauty and acquirements.”

When Evelina is in great trouble, and the “best of men,” Mr. Villars, is penetrated to the heart by the sight of her grief, he can think of no better consolation than:

“My dearest child, I cannot bear to see thy tears; for my sake dry them: such a sight is too much for me: think of that, Evelina, and take comfort, I charge thee.”

With similar masculine futility the self-centred Edmund Bertram attempts to soften the grief of his dear cousin:

“No wonder—you must feel it—you must suffer. How a man who had once loved, could desert you. But yours—your regard was new compared with——Fanny, think of me.”

Many a reader, doubtless, has, with Elizabeth Bennet, “lifted up his eyes in amazement” at the platitudes of Mary on the occasion of Lydia’s elopement, without suspecting that offensive young moralist of having culled her phrases from the earlier novelist. “Remember, my dear Evelina,” writes Mr. Villars, “nothing is so delicate as the reputation of a woman; it is at once the most beautiful and most brittle of all human things.” Now Mary was “a great reader and made extracts.” She evidently studied the art of judicious quotation: “Unhappy as the event must be for Lydia,” says this astounding sister,

“we may draw from it this useful lesson: that loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable—that one false step involves her in endless ruin—that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful, and that she cannot be too guarded in her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex.”

The general resemblance of Catherine Morland’s situation to Evelina’s may have been unconscious, but was scarcely, we think, accidental. In Northanger Abbey, as in no other of Miss Austen’s novels, though in all Miss Burney’s, the heroine is detached from her ordinary surroundings and introduced to society under the inefficient protection of foolish acquaintances. Like Evelina, she finds in the great world much cause for alarm and anxiety, though, like her, she has the hero for partner at her first ball. She, too, is frequently tormented by the differences between her aristocratic and her vulgar friends. Henry Tilney’s attitude towards her, on the other hand, is very similar to Lord Orville’s towards Evelina. He can read her like an open book, and his discovery of her suspicions about his father is as ingenious and as delicately revealed as Orville’s generous chivalry to Evelina at the ridotto. Indeed, had Fanny Burney been more daring she would have confessed that Orville’s affection for Evelina, like Tilney’s for Catherine,

“originated in nothing better than gratitude; or in other words, that a persuasion of her partiality for him had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought.”

The admiration which Evelina expressed with so much naïveté and earnestness to her guardian must have betrayed itself in her looks and conversation. Orville’s heart was won by unconscious flattery, though Miss Burney herself was too conventional to admit it. She left the conception and its defence to another. “It is a new circumstance in romance,” writes Miss Austen, “and dreadfully derogatory of an heroine’s dignity; but if it be as new in common life, the credit of a wild imagination will at least be all my own.”

We can scarcely avoid wondering whether Miss Austen remembered Sir Clement Willoughby when she decided upon the name of Marianne’s devoted, but faithless, lover. The two men bear somewhat similar relations to hero and heroine.

In one of her rare outbursts of self-confidence with the reader, Miss Austen appears to put Camilla on a level with Cecilia; and Thorpe’s abuse of this novel in Northanger Abbey must be interpreted as her own indirect praise, for that youth is never allowed to open his lips without exposing himself to our derision. It is immaterial to our purpose that posterity has accepted his verdict rather than Miss Austen’s. Her name appears among the subscribers to Camilla, and she was loyal to it without an effort. Here she was not likely to find much available material; but the conduct of Miss Margland towards Sir Hugh Tyrold and his adopted children may have suggested some traits in Mrs. Norris, and Mr. Westwyn’s naïve enthusiasm for his son bears a strong resemblance to that of Mr. Weston[9] for the inevitable Frank Churchill.

Miss Bingley made herself ridiculous by her definition of an accomplished woman as one who “must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages.” The germ of the satire appears in the experiences of Miss Burney’s The Wanderer, and in an allusion to the prevalent idea of feminine culture in Camilla:

“A little music, a little drawing, and a little dancing, which should all be but slightly pursued, to distinguish a lady of fashion from an artist.”

So writes Jane Austen, again, in Lady Susan:

“Not that I am an advocate for the prevailing fashion of acquiring a perfect knowledge of all languages, arts, and sciences. It is throwing away time to be mistress of French, Italian, and German; music, singing, and dancing.... I do not mean, therefore, that Frederika’s acquirements should be more than superficial, and I flatter myself that she will not remain long enough at school to understand anything thoroughly.”

It remains only to notice with what kindred indignation the two writers complain of the little honour accorded their craft. Miss Burney, in fact, did much to raise her profession; but it was not considered “quite respectable” by Miss Austen’s contemporaries.

Mr. Delvile complains of Cecilia’s large bill at the booksellers’, on the ground that

“a lady, whether so called from birth, or only from fortune, should never degrade herself by being put on a level with writers, and such sort of people.”

In the preface to Evelina Miss Burney declares that

“in the republic of letters, there is no member of such inferior rank, or who is so much disdained by his brethren of the quill, as the humble novelist; nor is his fate less hard in the world at large, since, among the whole class of writers, perhaps not one can be named of which the votaries are more numerous but less respectable.”

Jane Austen is more spirited in her complaint, and takes her example from Miss Burney herself:

“Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom, so common with novel-writers, of degrading, by their contemptuous censure, the very performances to the number of which they are themselves adding; joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronised by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve it. Let us leave it to the Reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the Press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers; and while the ability of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator and a chapter from Sterne, is eulogised by a thousand pens, there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. ‘I am no novel-reader; I seldom look into novels; it is really very well for a novel.’ Such is the common cant. ‘And what are you reading, Miss ——?’ ‘Oh, it’s only a novel!’ replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference or momentary shame. ‘It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda,’ or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.”

FOOTNOTES:

[8] There is good ground for thinking that the change of title was made after the novel was finished, for Mr. Austen-Leigh says that Pride and Prejudice was written between October 1796 and August 1797, while it is referred to as First Impressions in letters as late as June 1799.

[9] Even the names here sound unexpectedly similar.

“PERSUASION” TO “JANE EYRE”
(1818-1847)

Susan Ferrier (1782-1854) once declared that “perhaps, after all, the only uncloying pleasure in life is that of fault-finding”; and this cynical conclusion may serve to measure, in some degree, the peculiar flavour of her brisk satire. The fact is, that she acquired her notions of literary skill from intimate association with “the Modern Athens,” as Edinburgh then styled itself, wherein “Crusty Christopher” and “The Ploughman Poet” held sway. It was here, as we know, that “Brougham and his confederates” formed that conspiracy of scorn, The Edinburgh Review, which Wilson out-Heroded in Blackwood. Following Miss Burney, in her spirited exhibition of “Humours,” Miss Ferrier also continued the Edgeworth “national” novel, by exploiting a period of Scotch history untouched by Scott.

As her friend, Wilson, remarks in the Noctes:

“These novels have one feature of true and melancholy interest quite peculiar to themselves. It is in them alone that the ultimate breaking-down and debasement of the Highland character has been depicted. Sir Walter Scott had fixed the enamel of genius over the last fitful flames of their half-savage chivalry, but a humbler and sadder scene—the age of lucre-banished clans—of chieftains dwindled into imitation squires, and of chiefs content to barter the recollections of a thousand years for a few gaudy seasons of Almacks and Crockfords, the euthanasia of kilted aldermen and steamboat pibrochs was reserved for Miss Ferrier.”

And for the accuracy of her picture, the authoress herself lays claim to having paid careful attention to the results of deliberate study. “You may laugh,” she writes to Miss Clavering, “at the idea of its being at all necessary for the writer of a romance to be versed in the history, natural and political, the modes, manners, customs, etc., of the country where its bold and wanton freaks are to be played; but I consider it most essentially so, as nothing disgusts even an ordinary reader more than a discovery of the ignorance of the author, who is pretending to instruct and amuse.”

Meanwhile, the “Highlander” was more or less in fashion, and Susan Ferrier set off her picture by vivid contrasts with the most recherché daughters of Society. An elegant slave of passion longs to fly with her Henry to the desert—“a beautiful place, full of roses and myrtles, and smooth, green turf, and murmuring rivulets, and though very retired, not absolutely out of the world; where one could occasionally see one’s friends, and give déjeuner et fêtes-champêtres.” So the foolish Indiana in Miss Burney’s Camilla considered a “cottage” but “as a bower of eglantine and roses, where she might repose and be adored all day long.”

But a little experience soon teaches her she “did not very well then know what a desert was.” Scotch mists and mountain blasts dispel the fancy picture, and, after a brief period of acute wretchedness, the really heartless victim of a so-called love match becomes the zealous promoter of mercenary connections.

Miss Ferrier then introduces us to the next generation, where any attempt at dogmatism about love becomes hazardous.

“Love is a passion that has been much talked of, often described, and little understood. Cupid has many counterfeits going about the world, who pass very well with those whose minds are capable of passion, but not of love. These Birmingham Cupids have many votaries among boarding-school misses, militia officers, and milliners’ apprentices, who marry upon the mutual faith of blue eyes and scarlet coats; have dirty houses and squalling children, and hate each other most delectably. Then there is another species for more refined souls, which owes its birth to the works of Rousseau, Goethe, Coffin, etc. Its success depends very much upon rocks, woods, and waterfalls; and it generally ends in daggers, pistols, poisons, or Doctors’ Commons.”

It would seem that even the heroine is, like Emily in Udolpho, rather at sea concerning the proper distinction between virtue and taste.

She is “religious—what mind of any excellence is not? but hers is the religion of poetry, of taste, of feeling, of impulse, of any and everything but Christianity.” The worthy youth who loved her “saw much of fine natural feeling, but in vain sought for any guiding principle of duty. Her mind seemed as a lovely, flowery, pathless waste, whose sweets exhaled in vain; all was graceful luxuriance, but all was transient and perishable in its loveliness. No plant of immortal growth grew there, no ‘flowers worthy of Paradise.’”

Inevitably the dear creature is captivated, at first sight, by any good-looking villain: “There might, perhaps, be something of hauteur in his lofty bearing; but it was so qualified by the sportive gaiety of his manners, that it seemed nothing more than that elegant and graceful sense of his own superiority, to which, even without arrogance, he could not be insensible.”

The hero will no doubt require time before he can stand up against so fine a gentleman; but justice requires his ultimate triumph, since, in Miss Ferrier’s judgment, a “good moral” was always essential to fiction.

“I don’t think, like all penny-book manufacturers, that ’tis absolutely necessary that the good boys and girls should be rewarded, and the naughty ones punished. Yet, I think, where there is much tribulation, ’tis fitter it should be the consequence, rather than the cause, of misconduct or frailty. You’ll say that rule is absurd, inasmuch as it is not observed in human life. That I allow; but we know the inflictions of Providence are for wise purposes, therefore our reason willingly submits to them. But, as the only good purpose of a book is to inculcate morality, and convey some lesson of instruction as well as delight, I do not see that what is called a good moral can be dispensed with in a work of fiction.”