by Ann Thwaite
Ten days after publication, Haworth’s went into a third edition. Ten thousand copies were already in circulation in America. A Philadelphia Press reviewer wrote to Scribner that he was very much pleased with Mrs Burnett’s new work but wanted to make a suggestion. “If she can (and I don’t see why a woman of genius cannot), she should get out of Lancashire and its dialect and give us an American story, but without any yankee or nigger talk.” There were plenty of English novels already, weren’t there?
Washington society was beginning to notice Frances. “I find myself obliged to go out very often,” she wrote to Gilder, “and if I were to tell you what happened to me, you would think my head was turned . . . I have a very exciting time. I dare say if I stayed here long enough, I might have a boiled senator for dinner every day. I wonder how they would taste.” People were not quite sure what to make of Frances. She was very unpredictable. Julia Schayer—widow of a German count and wife of the Recorder of Deeds of the District of Columbia—recorded her impressions at this time: “There are those who call Mrs Burnett plain and those who call her beautiful. Some have found her cold, and an indifferent talker, while others have left her presence in a state of wild enthusiasm over her vivacity and brilliancy . . . She is as one happens to find her—gay, amusing, fascinating or reserved, distrait, even haughty as the case may be.”
There were not many people she was anxious to impress. Someone who knew her in these days recalled the embarrassment of her neighbour, Miss Brandt, keen to show off her celebrated friend to visitors from Paris. Frances was detached and reserved. The visitors leaned forward eagerly to hang upon her words, but the words were few and unimpressive. Then a group of children at the other end of the room—Miss Brandt’s nieces and nephews—begged Frances to tell them a story. “Her face changed . . . She sat down upon the floor . . . and in a moment she was deep in all kinds of elfish, childish talk . . . Her face, her whole figure, radiant, absorbed, the expressions of humor, of fear, of mystery flitting across it, reaching out to them and each expression reflected in the small faces about her.”
Frances’ name was becoming known in England too. There had been excellent reviews of That Lass o’ Lowrie’s, and thirty thousand copies had gone very quickly. The sheets of the Surly Tim stories had been sold to Chatto and Windus, and Macmillan, as we have seen, were publishing Haworth’s. Of Chatto, Scribner wrote to Swan, “You open connection with a good and enterprising firm than whom none are better.” He added, “W. H. Smith, the great newsman and member of parliament, took 1000 copies of the first edition of Surly Tim. This item alone is certainly indicative that Mrs Burnett’s reputation is rapidly growing in England.” She would be able to “command her own price” for a future book. Recent issues of Punch had contained a burlesque of That Lass o’ Lowrie’s. “It will afford you and Mrs Burnett a good deal of amusement.” It was excellent publicity if they could take a joke. “Mr Punch” maintained he had been approached by the New Provincial Novel Company and had been chided for never having exhibited “Life in the North with the real dialect of the northern provinces as it is spoken by the local yokel”. In his hands, Joan Lowrie becomes Em Beerie (or “Towery Beerie”, as she is known on account of her great height) and her accurate Lancashire becomes “Luke ere yo stewp’d foo’ ar a yo! Yo deed na nok th’ar tiddle-pops o’ ar Parson int’ ar kole-p’t, yar did na; bart oi deed, oi deed . . .” “Mr Punch” obviously thought it was a very good joke, for it went on for page after page, in issue after issue. But there was more irritating news from England. No fewer than four people had dramatized That Lass o’ Lowrie’s without consulting Frances. This was the second (Peterson’s treatment of her early stories had been the first) of many tedious skirmishes caused by the fluid and uncertain state of the copyright laws.
Adapters could and did do the most extraordinary things with the books they adapted. A review of Liz or That Lass o’ Lowrie’s at the Royal Amphitheatre, Liverpool, in the Era of 15th July 1877 points instantly to one of them. The character Liz in the book—the poor wronged girl with the bastard child—was obviously considered too strong meat for the stage, but Joan in the book is now called Liz. “Few modern stories have so secured the attention and approval of the public as Mrs Burnett’s That Lass o’ Lowrie’s and it is therefore no matter for surprise that the keen eye of the dramatic author should have seen its adaptability for stage purposes,” wrote the Era reviewer. “The mine explosion was managed with realistic success” and the whole production was highly recommended. This was a version by Joseph Hatton and Arthur Mathison.
Another dramatizer was Charles Reade. Reade is now scarcely remembered except for The Cloister and the Hearth, which everyone has heard of and few have read. He was an extremely prolific novelist and dramatist, specializing in adaptations. It was with some asperity that he replied to the Manchester Examiner’s charges that he had treated Mrs Burnett unfairly.
Suppose a man has an unenclosed meadow and imperfect law permits people to graze cows there gratis and suppose a dozen men do graze their cows there gratis, but one honest fellow says “I’ll graze my cows there, for I have a legal right, but I’ll pay you, because you have a moral right”, is not his morality higher than the world’s, higher than Manchester morality and higher still than American morality in its public dealing with foreign authors? Well, the above is the exact position I took, even when I doubted Mrs Burnett’s legal right. So much for my words misrepresented by Yankee anonymuncula—I might say skunkula . . . “Joan” was never played in the United States with my consent. But this Spring it was played four nights in some out-of-the-way part of that country. Those who played it forwarded me just £20. What did I do with it? Pocket it all or share it with Mrs Burnett? I sent her every cent of it and I forward you the voucher. Will you be so kind as to examine it and the endorsements and say whether I am or I am not punctilious in dealing with that gifted woman and her rights?
The controversy was the subject of a leader in the New York Times on 31st October 1878. Charles Reade had written to say that he had himself suffered by having his novels dramatized in the States: “I cannot be divinely just to American citizens in a business where they never show me one grain of human justice or even mercy; and so long as your nation is a literary thief, you must expect occasional reprisals.” “The only way for a novelist to protect a book,” wrote the New York Times, “is to dramatize it himself and copyright the play before he publishes the novel. If the latter is published first the author cannot prevent any person from adapting it for the stage, even though he should himself dramatize it . . . The Copyright Commissioners have recommended that the law be amended.” Joseph Hatton actually wrote to the paper saying that, but for his play, people would never have heard of the book.
The immediate result of all this as far as Frances was concerned was that she put aside her other work, sat down and plunged into dramatizing That Lass herself. “I never was so excited about anything in my life,” she wrote to Gilder. “I have rewritten the whole of the first act and am going on like wild fire. I can’t stop a moment,” but she could always find time to write to Gilder. “Doro keeps saying. ‘Now, don’t get excited, don’t get excited,’ but I am and I will be . . . I make Dan talk Dan Lowrie and Joan talk Joan instead of drivelling about her broken heart as Hatton has her do. I am wild to finish it and have you compare the two. Hatton’s play shall not be played to spoil my reputation. Oh! if I could see you! Doro suggests pounded ice. Yours frantically, The Dramatist.”
Frances’ version was played in New York in the autumn of 1878. She evidently had to accept the help of a collaborator, as the name of Julian Magnus appears with hers on the Booth Theatre playbills. As in nearly all the later productions of her plays, Frances involved herself in rehearsals. One night in New York she and Marie Gordon, who played Joan, were bemoaning the weakness of an actress in one of the minor parts: “Oh, how I wish I could take it!” Frances said, perhaps remembering her success as Bo Peep in the amateur theatricals in Lancashire.
Marie Gordon clutched her and almost shrieked, “Oh, if you only would. I would give the world if you would. If you would only try it once in some little town.” “Of course,” wrote Frances to Julia Schayer, “of course, I told her it was impossible, but wouldn’t it be a lark? However, I have a husband, also offspring and consequently rather shall my right hand cleave to the roof of my mouth.” It was bad enough being a writer. She was continually stepping off that beaten track that women were supposed to keep their feet on. Actresses, like Polly Pemberton in her early story, were considered to have a “horrid demoralizing life” and to be “tawdry and disreputable . . . painted and fast”. They could not be ladies—and Frances could still sometimes hear her mother’s voice in her ear: “Remember to be always a little lady.”
What indeed would Eliza Hodgson have thought if she had been able to see Frances in the stalls at the Booth Theatre watching her play, miles away from her place beside her husband and children? Was it true, as Frances had suggested ruefully to Richard Gilder, that she had been a much nicer person in those early Knoxville days? Those quiet days flourished in her memory; the frustrations and limitations she was beginning to forget. She had certainly succumbed to the attractions of the theatre, but the production of That Lass O’ Lowrie’s was not a success. When it was on tour in Philadelphia, the critic of the Daily Sun lamented that Marie Gordon “moved through the scenes in a dreamy and disagreeable manner”; “Mr J. B. Booth as Dan Lowrie looked villainous” but “Mr Harry Dalton as Fergus Derrick was very heroic, rolled his eyes, sighed and made altogether a very sickly lover”. It was discouraging; but “Esmeralda”—one of her Paris stories—was soon to be a triumph on the stage. Frances could persuade herself that there was nothing actually sinful about the theatre, though it did take her away from her children, and that gave her a bad conscience when she remembered to think about it.
There were things besides the theatre which took her away from the children. In February 1879, for instance, she was invited to dine with the Papyrus Club of Boston. She wrote to Gilder to ask his advice: “Please tell me frankly in confidence if you think I should like it. It startles me just at first to be brought before the world by people who have entertained Longfellow and Holmes and other distinguished persons. Would I be simply expected to beam my little beam as I do in Washington and murmur gently, ‘Thanks. You are very kind to say so’. ‘You are very good, etc. etc’ . . .”
Gilder evidently encouraged her, and she had a helpful letter too from Mary Mapes Dodge, editor of St Nicholas, Scribner’s children’s magazine, and author of Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates: “Perhaps, if you have no escort, you may like to go to the Revere House, where I shall settle for a day or two, because the dinner is to be at that house, and it will be ‘handy’ for unprotected females to step downstairs to the dining room.”
Frances arrived in Boston in good time. Vivian Burnett tells what happened next: “A kindly young Harvard professor invited her to go with him to Concord, to see the historic town and meet Emerson, the trip to be made in the afternoon, before the banquet in her honor. The dear old Sage of Concord was met and an excursion about the town was being considered when the escort suddenly awoke to the important fact that there was no train running to Boston from Concord which would get his confiding guest back in time for the banquet . . . It was a piteously painful moment for a diffident young writer who had come a long distance, with much misgiving, to be honoured by a gathering of literary notables.” They were very late indeed for the dinner—but all was not lost. John Boyle O’Reilly wrote afterwards: “Do you know how you charmed everyone in Boston, Mrs Burnett? Oh, of course not; but you did . . .” One of the company was Louisa M. Alcott: Little Women had been published eleven years before. Should Frances be spending the time with her own children, rather than being feted by the authors of children’s books? She genuinely loved her children and was charmed and fascinated by them—but she found her own image of goodness, which occurs a number of times in different books, of the young mother in the nursery with her baby on her knee, a peculiarly testing one. The idea of it was delightful but the reality not attractive for very long, unless there was someone gazing in from outside that nursery door, admiring and appreciating the image.
Was she becoming too self-conscious altogether? She was working on Louisiana, her first American novel. Olivia Ferrol, a New York girl holidaying in a North Carolina mountain resort, writes to her literary brother: “You see how I have fallen a victim to that dreadful habit of looking at everything in the light of material. A man is no longer a man—he is ‘material’; Sorrow is not sorrow, joy is not joy—it is ‘material’, there is something rather ghoulish about it.” In a letter to Gilder, Frances had seen herself as a “species of ghoul”; “I take a slice off somebody almost every day. I wonder if it is quite fair.”
The habit might make life difficult but it worked well from a literary point of view. Louisiana is an exploration of Frances’ favourite theme. It is a Pygmalion story. Olivia decides to take Louisiana, the simple farmer’s daughter, in hand. “If you were dressed as I am . . .” she muses. There is a marvellous scene where she questions Louisiana and reveals her absolute ignorance:
“You never read The Scarlet Letter?”
She flushed guiltily. “No,” she answered. “Nor—nor any of the others.”
Miss Ferrol gazed at her silently for a few moments. Then she asked her a question in a low voice, specially mellowed, so that it might not alarm her.
“Do you know who John Stuart Mill is?” she said.
“No,” she replied from the dust of humiliation.
“Have you never heard—just heard—of Ruskin?”
“No.”
“Nor of Michael Angelo?”
“N-no—ye-es, I think so—perhaps, but I don’t know what he did.”
“Do you,” she continued, very slowly, “do—you—know—anything—about Worth?”
“No, nothing.”
“Oh,” she cried, “how—how you have been neglected!” She was really depressed.
Olivia determines to train Louisiana’s young mind in the path of learning and literature but realizes she has almost betrayed her own frivolous nature:
“If you wish to—to acquire anything, you must read conscientiously and—and with a purpose.” She was rather proud of that last clause.
“Must I?” inquired Louise, humbly. “I should like to—if I knew where to begin. Who was Worth? Was he a poet?”
Miss Ferrol acquired a fine, high color very suddenly.
“Oh,” she answered, with some uneasiness, “you—you have no need to begin with Worth. He doesn’t matter so much—really.”
But it is the Worth dresses in Olivia’s trunk, rather than any rapidly acquired literary small talk, which transform Louisiana and encourage Laurence, Olivia’s literary brother, to fall in love with her. The story is far more than a gentle satire on the pretensions of literary New York; it is a passionate defence of the simple, unsophisticated values, of the quiet life Frances had herself known in New Market.
Washington life was delightful, of course, on the surface. But Frances could feel a part of herself disappearing. “I was a much nicer girl when I wrote that than I am now.” Tennessee was so far away. Was she herself exchanging old Dr Burnett’s values (as I said earlier, Louisiana’s father was probably based on Swan’s father) for those of a world which pretended to admire Ruskin but secretly put more value on Worth?
Swan saw the changes in Frances with misgiving. He wrote sadly to Edith on 24th August 1881, when Frances was away from home, as she was so often away.
“There are a few old-fashioned notions which I had when we all lived together in Vagabondia which I am not yet ready to give up. I learned in those old days the value of love, and faithfulness and unselfishness and my more extended experience has only taught me to value them still more highly. It has taught me moreover that happiness comes from within and not from without. And do you know there have been times wh
en I would have been glad to have gone back to the old days with all its hardness and uncertainty? It held at least hope and confidence and it has not always been thus since we last met.” He went on to tell of his struggles on coming to Washington (already quoted on page 68). “Now! Don’t you think I have talked a good deal about myself? As regards the others, they were well a day or two ago—Frances has finished her play [Esmeralda] and it will be put on the stage at the Madison Square Theater, New York about the 1st of October. I hope it may be a success. It has cost her enough in various ways to make it.”
All her work in these four years since coming to Washington had been done at great cost. She had pushed herself—or been pushed—too hard. She had written four novels, two plays and numerous short stories. She had moved house three times, run a home and concerned herself fully in the lives of her two small sons. She had entertained and been entertained. And—conscious of her lack of formal education—she had read a great deal. David Hutchinson, superintendent of the Congressional Library, had outlined a reading course for her. It had all been too much. As she put it herself in a letter to Gilder, “I seemed to arrive at my breakdown. My backbone disappeared and my brain; when I found they were really gone, I missed them. Their defection seemed so curious that I began to try to account for it and finally rambled weakly round to the conclusion that it might be because I had written ten books in six years and done two or three other little things. You have to have a reason, you know, and even a poor one is better than none . . . I lie on my back and despise myself.”
There were other effects than purely physical ones. Swan had suffered; their marriage had suffered. Frances herself, though more often buoyant and optimistic, had days of deep depression. There is chilling evidence of this in an undated fragment in her own writing:
I wonder if it ever occurs to any one that it is possible that I should be tired. I don’t think it does, in even the faintest manner. “How did you get on this morning? How much did you do? Is your story nearly finished? How much longer will it take you?” That is what they say to me.