Woman's Work in English Fiction, from the Restoration to the Mid-Victorian Period

by Clara Helen Whitmore

  CHAPTER XI

  Miss Ferrier. Miss Mitford. Anna Maria Hall

  Walter Scott, the most chivalrous of all writers, brought to an endwoman's supremacy in the novel, in 1814. At this time prose fiction wasfar different from what it was in 1772, when Tobias Smollet died, andmuch of this difference was due to women. Professor Masson, in hislectures on the novel, gives the names of twenty novelists who wrotebetween 1789-1814 who are remembered in the history of Englishliterature. "With the exception of Godwin," he writes, "I do not knowthat any of the male novelists I have mentioned could be put incomparison, in respect of genuine merit, with such novelists of theother sex as Mrs. Radcliffe, Miss Edgeworth, and Miss Austen." It isequally worthy of note that, of the twenty names given, fourteen arewomen.

  Although during these years women had developed the historical novel,and had brought the novel of mystery to a high degree of perfection,they left the most enduring stamp on literature as realists, as paintersof everyday life and commonplace people. Francis Jeffrey wrote:

  "It required almost the same courage to get rid of the jargon offashionable life and the swarms of peers, foundlings, and seducers, thatinfested our modern fables as it did in those days to sweep away themythological persons of antiquity, and to introduce characters who spokeand acted like those who were to peruse their adventures."

  Women awakened interest in the humdrum lives of their neighbours nextdoor, and this without any exaggeration, simply by minute attention tolittle things, and quick sympathy in the joys and sorrows of others.They described manners and customs; their view of life was largelyobjective. It is a noteworthy fact that while Scott was casting over allEurope the light of romanticism, the women writers of the time, with butone or two exceptions, were viewing life with the clear vision of MissEdgeworth and Miss Austen, as if the world obtruded too glaringly upontheir eyes to be lost sight of in happy day-dreams.

  * * * * *

  Susan Edmonstone Ferrier is better known to-day as the friend of Scott,and an occasional visitor at Abbotsford, than as a successful novelist.She was born at Edinburgh in 1782, where her father, James Ferrier, wasWriter to the Signet, and at one time Clerk of Session, Scott being oneof his colleagues. That great genius was one of the earliest toappreciate the excellence of her descriptions of Scottish life given inher first book, entitled _Marriage_, published anonymously in 1818. Inthe conclusion of the _Tales of my Landlord_ he paid the unknown writerthis graceful tribute:

  "There remains behind not only a large harvest, but labourers capable ofgathering it in; more than one writer has of late displayed talents ofthis description, and if the present author, himself a phantom, may bepermitted to distinguish a brother, or perhaps a sister, shadow, hewould mention in particular the author of the very lively work entitled_Marriage_."

  Miss Ferrier wrote but three novels, _Marriage_, _The Inheritance_, and_Destiny_, a period of six years intervening between the appearance ofeach of them. Like Miss Burney and Miss Edgeworth she depicts two gradesof society. She shows forth the fashionable life of Edinburgh andLondon, and the cruder mode of living found in the Scottish Highlands.But between her and her models there is the great difference of geniusand talent. They passed what they had seen through the alembic ofimagination; she has depicted what she saw with the faithfulness of thecamera, and the crude realism of these scenes does not always blendwith the warp and woof of the story.

  Like Miss Edgeworth, Miss Ferrier had a moral to work out. She treatssociety as a satirist, and lays bare its heartlessness, and theunhappiness of its members who to escape ennui are led hither andthither by the caprice of the moment. While she may present one side ofthe picture, one hesitates to accept Lady Juliana, Mrs. St. Clair, orLady Elizabeth as common types of a London drawing-room.

  Her plots as well as her characters suffer from this conscious attemptto teach the happiness that must follow the practice of the Christianvirtues. In _Marriage_ there are two complete stories. Lady Juliana isthe heroine of the first part; her two daughters, who are born in thefirst half, supplant their mother as heroines of the second half. Theplot of _Destiny_ is not much better. The denouement is tame, and thecharacters lack consistency. _The Inheritance_ has the strongest plot ofthe three; but Mrs. St. Clair and her secret interviews with themonstrosity Lewiston, who, by the way, has the honour to be an American,throw an air of unreality over a story in many respects intensely real.In this story, as in so many old novels, the nurse's daughter had beenbrought up as the rightful heiress. The scene in which she tells herbetrothed lover, the heir of the estate, the story of her birth, whichshe had just learned, is said to have suggested to Tennyson thebeautiful ballad of _Lady Clare_.

  But when Miss Ferrier sees loom in imagination the sombre purple hillsof the Highlands, with the black tarns in the hollows half-hidden inmist, her genius awakes. If she had devoted herself to these people andthis region, and ignored the fashionable life of the cities, she mighthave written a book worthy to be placed beside the best of MissEdgeworth or Miss Mitford. At the time she wrote, the Highland chief nolonger summoned his clan about him at a blast from his bugle, but he hadlost little of his old-time picturesqueness. The opening of _Destiny_describes the wealth of the chief of Glenroy:

  "All the world knows that there is nothing on earth to be compared to aHighland chief. He has his loch and his islands, his mountains and hiscastle, his piper and his tartan, his forests and his deer, histhousands of acres of untrodden heath, and his tens of thousands ofblack-faced sheep, and his bands of bonneted clansmen, with claymoresand Gaelic, and hot blood and dirks."

  But Miss Ferrier also depicted a more sordid type of Highlander.Christopher North in his _Noctes Ambrosianae_ writes of her novels:

  "They are the works of a very clever woman, sir, and they have onefeature of true and melancholy interest quite peculiar to themselves. Itis in them alone that the ultimate breaking-down and debasement of theHighland character has been depicted. Sir Walter Scott had fixed theenamel of genius over the last fitful gleams of their half-savagechivalry, but a humbler and sadder scene--the age of lucre-banishedclans,--of chieftains dwindled into imitation squires, and of chiefscontent to barter the recollections of a thousand years for a few gaudyseasons of Almacks and Crockfords, the euthanasia of kilted aldermen andsteamboat pibrochs, was reserved for Miss Ferrier."

  Besides her descriptions of the Highlands, Miss Ferrier has drawnseveral Scotch characters that deserve to live. What a delightful groupis described in _Marriage_, consisting of the three Misses Douglas,known as "The girls," and their friend Mrs. Maclaughlan! Miss JackyDouglas, the senior of the trio, "was reckoned a woman of sense"; MissGrizzy was distinguished by her good-nature and the entanglement of herthoughts; and it was said that Miss Nicky was "not wanting for senseeither"; while their friend Lady Maclaughlan loved and tyrannised overall three of them. Sir Walter Scott admired the character of Miss BeckyDuguid, a poor old maid, who "was expected to attend all accouchements,christenings, deaths, chestings, and burials, but she was seldom askedto a marriage, and never to any party of pleasure." Joanna Bailliethought the loud-spoken minister, M'Dow, a true representative of a fewof the Scotch clergy whose only aim is preferment and good cheer. Butnone of her other characters can compare with the devoted Mrs. MollyMacaulay, the friend of the Chief of Glenroy in _Destiny_. When Glenroyhas an attack of palsy, she hurries to him, and when she is told that hehas missed her, she exclaims with perfect self-forgetfulness:

  "Deed, and I thought he would do that, for he has always been so kind tome,--and I thought sometimes when I was away, oh, thinks I to myself, Iwonder what Glenroy will do for somebody to be angry with,--forBen-bowie's grown so deaf, poor creature, it's not worth his while to beangry at him,--and you're so gentle that it would not do for him to beangry at you; but I'm sure he has a good right to be angry at me,considering how kind he has always been to me."

  Christopher North said of Molly Macaulay, "No sinner of our gender couldhave adequately filled up the
outline."

  George Saintsbury, considering the permanent value of Miss Ferrier'swork, wrote for the _Fortnightly Review_ in 1882:

  "Of the four requisites of the novelist, plot, character, description,and dialogue, she is only weak in the first. The lapse of an entirehalf-century and a complete change of manners have put her books to thehardest test they are ever likely to have to endure, and they comethrough it triumphantly."

  But, besides the excellences mentioned by Mr. Saintsbury, Miss Ferrieris master of humour and pathos. No story is sadder than that of RonaldMalcolm, the hero of _Destiny_. He had been willed the castle of InchOrran with its vast estates, but with the provision that he was to haveno benefit from it until his twenty-sixth year. In case of his death theproperty was to go to his father, an upright but poor man. As Ronald hadmany years to wait before he could enjoy his riches, he entered thenavy. His ship was lost at sea and the news of his death reported inScotland. But Ronald had been rescued from the sinking ship, andreturned to his father's cottage. Here he met a purblind old woman, whotold him how his father, Captain Malcolm, had moved to the castle, andwhat good he was doing among his tenantry. She described the sorrow ofthe people at the death of Ronald, but added: "Och! it was God'sprovidence to tak' the boy out of his worthy father's way; and noo a'thing 's as it should be, and he has gotten his ain, honest man; andlong, long may he enjoy it!" And then she said thankfully, "The poorlad's death was a great blessing--och ay, 'deed was 't." The scene whereRonald goes to the castle and looks in at the window upon the happyfamily group, consisting of his father and mother, brothers and sisters,resembles in many particulars the sad return of Enoch Arden. The closeof the scene is as touching in the novel as in the poem: "Yes, yes, theyare happy, and I am forgotten!" sobs the lad, as he turns away.

  Miss Ferrier, however, seldom touches the pathetic; she is first of alla humourist. But there is a blending of the smiles and tears of humanlife in the delightful character of Adam Ramsay. Engaged as a boy toLizzie Lundie, he had gone forth into the world to make a fortune, butwhen he returned after many years he found that she had married in hisabsence, and soon afterwards had died. Crabbed to all about him, hestill cherished the remembrance of his early love, and was quickly movedby any appeal to her memory.

  The practical philosophy of the Scottish peasantry is amusingly setforth in the scene where Miss St. Clair visits one of the cottages onLord Rossville's estate. She found the goodman very ill, and everythingabout the room betokening extreme poverty. When she offered to send himmilk and broth, and a carpet and chairs to make the room morecomfortable, his wife interposed, "A suit o' gude bein comfortable deadclaise, Tammes, wad set ye better than aw the braw chyres an' carpets i'the toon." Sometime afterward, when Miss St. Clair called to see how theinvalid was, she found him in the press-bed, while the clothes werewarming before the fire. His wife explained that she could not have himin the way, and if he were cold, it could not be helped, as the clotheshad to be aired, and added, "An' I 'm thinkin' he 'll no be lang o'wantin' them noo."

  But notwithstanding her humour, Miss Ferrier was a stern moralist, whoseattitude toward life had been influenced indirectly by the teachings ofJohn Knox. She sometimes seems to stand her characters in the stocks,and call upon the populace to view their sins or absurdities. She seldomthrows the veil of charity over them. Men as novelists are prone toexaggeration. Women have represented life with greater truth both in itslarger aspects and in details. Miss Ferrier carries this quality to anextreme. She tells not only the truth, but, with almost heartlesshonesty, reveals the whole of it, so that many of her men and women arerepugnant to the reader while they amuse him. The best judges ofScottish manners have borne witness to the exactness of her portraiture.She is, perhaps, an example of the artistic failure of over-realism.

  Mary Russell Mitford like Miss Ferrier painted her scenes and herportraits from real life. But there is as wide a difference betweentheir writings as between the rocky ledges of the Grampian Hills and thesoft meadows bathed in the sunshine which stretch back of the cottagesof Our Village. Miss Mitford's, indeed, was a sunny nature, not to behardened nor embittered by a lifelong anxiety over poverty and debts.Her father, Dr. Mitford, had spent nearly all his own fortune when hemarried Miss Mary Russell, an heiress. Besides being constantly involvedin lawsuits, he was addicted to gambling, and soon squandered thefortune which his wife had brought him, besides twenty thousand poundswon in a lottery. He is said to have lost in speculations and at playabout seventy thousand pounds, at that time a large fortune. Theauthoress was a little over thirty years of age when the poverty of thefamily forced them to leave Bertram House, their home for many years,and remove to a little labourer's cottage about a mile away, on theprincipal street of a little village near Reading, known as Three MileCross. Here the support of the family devolved upon the daughter, aburden made harder by the continual extravagance of the father, whom shedevotedly loved. Although she received large sums for her writings, itis with the greatest weariness that she writes to her friend MissBarrett, afterwards Mrs. Browning, of the struggles that have been hersthe greater part of her life, the ten or twelve hours of literarydrudgery each day, often in spite of ill health, and her hope that shemay always provide for her father his accustomed comforts. Not only wasshe enabled to do this, but, through the help of friends, to pay, afterhis death, the one thousand pounds indebtedness, his only legacy to her.

  Yet there is not a trace of this worry in the delightful series ofpapers called _Our Village_, which she began to contribute at this timeto the _Lady's Magazine_. Before this she had become known as a poet anda successful playwright, but had believed herself incapable of writinggood prose. Necessity revealed her fine power of description, and ThreeMile Cross furnished her with scenes and characters.

  _Our Village_ marked a new style in fiction. The year it was commenced,she wrote to a friend:

  "With regard to novels, I should like to see one undertaken without anyplot at all. I do not mean that it should have no story; but I shouldlike some writer of luxuriant fancy to begin with a certain set ofcharacters--one family, for instance--without any preconceived designfarther than one or two incidents or dialogues, which would naturallysuggest fresh matter, and so proceed in this way, throwing in incidentsand characters profusely, but avoiding all stage tricks and strongsituations, till some death or marriage should afford a naturalconclusion to the book."

  Miss Mitford followed this plan as far as her great love of nature wouldpermit. For when she found her daily cares too great to be borne in thelittle eight-by-eight living-room, she escaped to the woods and fields.She loved the poets who wrote of nature, and next to Miss Austen, whomshe placed far above any other novelist, she delighted in the novels ofCharlotte Smith, and in her own pages there is the same true feeling fornature.

  _Our Village_ follows in a few particulars Gilbert White's _History ofSelborne_. As he described the beauties of Selborne through the varyingseasons of the year, she describes her walks about Three Mile Cross,first when the meadows are covered with hoar frost, then when the air isperfumed with violets, and later when the harvest field is yellow withripened corn. All the lanes, the favourite banks, the shady recesses aredescribed with delicate and loving touch. How her own joyous, optimisticnature speaks in this record of a morning walk in a backward spring:

  "Cold bright weather. All within doors, sunny and chilly; all without,windy and dusty, It is quite tantalising to see that brilliant suncareering through so beautiful a sky, and to feel little more warmthfrom his presence than one does from that of his fair but cold sister,the moon. Even the sky, beautiful as it is, has the look of that onesometimes sees in a very bright moonlight night--deeply, intensely blue,with white fleecy clouds driven vigorously along by a strong breeze, nowveiling and now exposing the dazzling luminary around whom they sail. Abeautiful sky! and, in spite of its coldness, a beautiful world!"

  But how naturally we meet the people of the village and becomeinterested in them. There is Harriet, the b
elle of the village, "a flirtpassive," who made the tarts and puddings in the author's kitchen; JoelBrent, her lover, a carter by calling, but, by virtue of his personalaccomplishments, the village beau. There is the publican, the carpenter,the washerwoman; little Lizzie, the spoilt child, and all the other boysand girls of the village. It is very natural to-day to meet these poorpeople in novels; at that time the poor people of Ireland and Scotlandhad begun to creep into fiction, but it was as unusual in England as anovel without a plot. Even to-day Miss Mitford's attitude toward thesepeople is not common. It seems never to have occurred to the author, andcertainly does not to her readers, that these men dressed in overallsand these women in print dresses with sleeves rolled to the elbow werenot the finest ladies and gentlemen of the land. She greets them allwith a playful humour which reminds one of the genial smile of Elia. C.H. Herford in _The Age of Wordsworth_ wrote of _Our Village_:

  "No such intimate and sympathetic portrayal of village life had beengiven before, and perhaps it needed a woman's sympathetic eye for littlethings to show the way. Of the professional story-teller on the alertfor a sensation there is as little as of the professional novelist onthe watch for a lesson."

  _Belford Regis_, a series of country and town sketches, was written soonafter the completion of _Our Village_. Here again is the happy blendingof nature and humanity; the same fusion of truth and fiction. As BelfordRegis is "Our Market Town," there is a wider range of characters, asdifferent classes are represented; and a more intimate view, since thesame people appear in more than one story. Stephen Lane, the butcher,and his wife are often met with. He is so fat that "when he walks, heoverfills the pavement, and is more difficult to pass than a link offull-dressed misses or a chain of becloaked dandies." Of Mrs. Lane shewrites: "Butcher's wife and butcher's daughter though she were, yet wasshe a graceful and gracious woman, one of nature's gentlewomen in lookand in thought." There was Miss Savage, "who was called a sensible womanbecause she had a gruff voice and vinegar aspect"; and Miss Steele, whowas called literary, because forty years ago she made a grand poeticalcollection. Miss Mitford even does justice to Mrs. Hollis, the fruitererand the village gossip; "There she sits, a tall, square, upright figure,surmounted by a pleasant, comely face, eyes as black as a sloe, cheeksas rounds as an apple, and a complexion as ruddy as a peach, as fine aspecimen of a healthy, hearty English tradeswoman, the feminine of JohnBull, as one would desire to see on a summer's day.... As a gossip shewas incomparable. She knew everybody and everything; had always thefreshest intelligence, and the newest news; her reports like her plumshad the bloom on them, and she would as much have scorned to palm uponyou an old piece of scandal as to send you strawberries that had beentwo days gathered."

  A reviewer in the _Athenaeum_ thus criticises the book:

  "If (to be hypercritical) the pictures they contain be a trifle toosunny and too cheerful to be real--if they show more generosity andrefinement and self-sacrifice existing among the middle classes thandoes exist,--too much of the meek beauty, too little of the squalidityof humble life,--we love them none the less, and their authoress all themore."

  In _Belford Regis_ we miss the fields, the brooks, the flowers, and thesky, which made the charm of _Our Village_. In some respects it is amore ambitious book, but it has not the perennial charm of _OurVillage_.

  Miss Mitford's favourite author, as we have seen, was Jane Austen. Shehad the same regard for her that Miss Austen felt for Fanny Burney. Thetwo authors have many points of resemblance. Both have the same clearvision, and sunny nature; the same repugnance to all that issensational, or coarse, or low; the same dislike of strong pathos orbroad humour; and Miss Mitford has approached more closely than anyother writer to the elegance of diction and purity of style of MissAusten.

  They have another point in common, they both show excellent taste intheir writings. This quality of good taste is due to native delicacy andrefinement, a sensitive withdrawal from what is ugly, and a quickfeeling for true proportion; the very things which give to a woman hersuperior tact, which Ruskin has called "the touch sense." In the novelit is pre-eminently a feminine characteristic. Few men have it in amarked degree. It adds all the charm we feel in the presence of arefined woman to the novels of Miss Edgeworth, Miss Austen, and MissMitford.

  But, while Miss Mitford and Miss Austen have many points of resemblance,they have many points of difference. Miss Austen liked the society ofmen and women, and during her younger days was fond of dinner-partiesand balls. Miss Mitford preferred the woods and fields, liked thesociety of her dogs, and wrote to a friend before she was twenty thatshe would never go to another dance if she could help it. Miss Austenselects a small group of gentry, and by the intertwining of their livesforms a beautiful plot; Miss Mitford rambles through the village and thecountry walks of Three Mile Cross, and as she meets the butcher, thepublican, the boys at cricket, she gleans some story of interest, andbrings back to us, as it were, a basket in which have been thrown incareless profusion violets and anemones, cowslips and daisies, and allthe other flowers of the field.

  * * * * *

  Mrs. Anna Maria Hall, a country-woman of Miss Edgeworth, wrote of herfirst novel: "_My Sketches of Irish Character_, my first dear book, wasinspired by a desire to describe my native place, as Miss Mitford haddone in _Our Village_, and this made me an author." Most of thesesketches were drawn from the county of Wexford, her native place, whoseinhabitants, she says in the preface, are descendants of theAnglo-Norman settlers of the reign of Henry the Second, and speak alanguage unknown in other districts of Ireland.

  The book is a series of well-told stories of the poor people, whom weshould have imagined to be pure Celt, if the author had not said theyresembled the English. There is the tender pathos, the quick humour, thejoke which often answers an argument, the guidance of the heart ratherthan the head; but she has dwelt upon one characteristic but lightlytouched upon by Miss Edgeworth and Lady Morgan, the poetic feeling ofthe Celt, the imagery that so often adorns their common speech. The oldIrish wife says to the bride who speaks disrespectfully of the fairies:"Hush, Avourneen! Sure they have the use of the May-dew before it falls,and the colour of the lilies and the roses before it's folded in thetender buds; and can steal the notes out of the birds' throats whilethey sleep."

  _The Irish Peasantry_, and _Lights and Shadows of Irish Life_, won Mrs.Hall the ill-will rather than the love of her countrymen. She had livedfor a long time in England, and upon returning to her native land wasimpressed by the lack of forethought which kept the country poor. Theirearly marriages, their indifference to time, their frequent visits tothe public house, their hospitality to strangers even when theythemselves were in extreme poverty and debt--all made so deep animpression upon her mind that she attempted to teach the Irish worldlywisdom. But the lesson was distasteful to the people and probablyuseless, as the characteristics which she would change were the veryessence of the Irish nature, the traits which made him a Celt, not aSaxon. In these books, the wooings, weddings, and funerals areportrayed, and there is a little glimpse of fairy lore.

  _Midsummer Eve, a Fairy Tale of Love_, grew out of the fairy legends ofIreland. It is said that a child whose father has died before its birthis placed by nature under the peculiar guardianship of the fairies; and,if born on Midsummer Eve, it becomes their rightful property; they takeit to their own homes and leave in its place one of their changelings.The heroine of the story is a child of that nature, over whose birth thefairies of air, earth, and water preside. But at the will of Nightstar,Queen of the Fairies of the Air, she is left with her mother, butadopted and watched over by the fairies as their own. Their great giftto her is that of loving and being loved. The human element is not wellblended with the fairy element. The entire setting should have beenrural, for in the city of London, particularly in the exhibition of theRoyal Academy, where part of the story is placed, it is not easy tokeep the tranquil twilight atmosphere, which fairies love. The book islike a song in which the bass and sopr
ano are written in different keys.But when we are back in Ireland, and the fairies again appear anddisappear, it is charming. The old woodcutter, Randy, who sees and talkswith the fairies, is a delightful creature, and gives to the story muchof its beauty.

  Mrs. Hall's novels have but little literary value, but she has broughtto light Irish characteristics and Irish traditions which wereoverlooked by her predecessors, and for that reason they deserve tolive.