A SERIOUS OCCUPATION
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A SERIOUS OCCUPATION
Literary Criticism by Victorian Women Writers
edited by
S O LVEIG C . ROBI NS ON
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© 2003 Solveig C. Robinson
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National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
A serious occupation : literary criticism by Victorian women writers / edited by Solveig C.
Robinson.
Includes bibliographical references.
isbn 1-55111-350-3
1. English literature—19th century—History and criticism. 
2. Criticism—Great Britain—History—19th century—Sources. 3. Women critics—Great
Britain—History—19th century.  I. Robinson, Solveig C., 1962–
pr463.S47 2003 820.9’008 c2002-905560-1
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For Peter
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Acknowledgments | ix
Introduction | xi
Characters of Intellect: Portia (1832)
Anna Jameson | 1
Achievements of the Genius of Scott (December 1832)
Harriet Martineau | 23
Review of Vanity Fair and Jane Eyre (December 1848)
Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake | 46
People Who Do Not Like Poetry (May 1849)
Eliza Cook | 74
Editor’s Preface to the New Edition of Wuthering Heights (1850) 
Charlotte Brontë | 81
Silly Novels by Lady Novelists (October 1856)
George Eliot | 88
To Novelists—and a Novelist (April 1861)
Dinah Mulock Craik | 116
The Uses and Pleasures of Poetry for the Working Classes (1863)
Janet Hamilton | 131
Review of Cometh Up as a Flower (April 1867)
Geraldine Jewsbury | 138
Novels (September 1867)
Margaret Oliphant | 144
CONTENTS
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A Remonstrance (November 1867)
Mary Elizabeth Braddon | 175
On Fiction as an Educator (October 1870)
Anne Mozley | 187
Browning’s Poems (December 1870)
Elizabeth Julia Hasell | 208
Jane Austen (August 1871)
Anne Thackeray Ritchie | 234
Style and Miss Austen (December 1884)
Mary Augusta (Mrs. Humphry) Ward | 254
Women’s Books—A Possible Library (May 1889)
Helen Blackburn | 269
Literature: Then and Now (April 1890)
Eliza Lynn Linton | 277
Christina Rossetti (February 1895)
Alice Meynell | 299
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thanks are due to many organizations and individuals for
research assistance and encouragement. I am especially grateful to the
American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) for fellowship support
in 1998–99. I would also like to thank my colleagues at Pacific
Lutheran University and at Mary Washington College for their support
and assistance, and the library staffs at Pacific Lutheran University, the
University of Puget Sound, and Mary Washington College for their
fine work in locating source materials. Further thanks are due the
members of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) and
of VICTORIA for their interest, support, and material assistance with
this project. For extra assistance, special thanks go to Ellen Jordan,
University of Newcastle, Australia, for sharing work in progress on
Anne Mozley; Thomas J. Tobin, William Morris Society, for tracking
an Alice Meynell quotation; and Mark Jensen and Eric Nelson, Pacific
Lutheran University, for help with translations.
ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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although literary criticism by Victorian men of letters
has always been widely available, the literary criticism written by
Victorian women has remained relatively obscure. In large part, this
has been the result of cultural biases about who was entitled to write
criticism. Criticism has always been a high-prestige genre, because the
critic by definition assumes a position of authority relative to the text,
the author, and the reader. In her study of The Woman Reader,
1837–1914, Kate Flint notes that any kind of reading is bound up in
questions of authority: “authority to speak, to write, to define, to
manage, and to change not just the institutions of literature, but those
of society itself” (43). During the Victorian period, when authors as
diverse as Sarah Stickney Ellis, Alfred Tennyson, and John Ruskin reit-
erated the theme that woman’s proper place was in a domestic,
supporting role to masculine authority, women’s ability to judge for
others was assumed to be strictly limited, and such assumptions about
the rigidity of the Victorian separate spheres persisted into the late
twentieth century. The persistence of these assumptions helps to
account for the fact that, until recently, very few scholars have even
looked for criticism by Victorian women. Indeed, in a 1989 study of
the Victorian novel-publishing industry, Edging Women Out, sociolo-
gist Gaye Tuchman simply voiced what was considered to be a truism
when she stated flatly that “Unlike men, women never possessed the
power to define the nature of good literature” (204).
But these assumptions about Victorian women’s power to influence
both society and literature as critics have been proven wrong.
xi
INTRODUCTION
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Feminist scholarship from the 1970s onward has recalled to view a
considerable number of Victorian women who worked openly in
numerous areas in the public sphere, from art to politics to science,
as well as many more whose work was performed more discreetly but
who were, nonetheless, very influential in their particular fields.
Ongoing research in literary studies, particularly in the field of
Victorian periodicals, has brought to light a considerable number of
powerful and respected women who met the challenges of the seri-
ous occupation of literary criticism.
Scholarship in Victorian periodicals has been crucial to the redis-
covery of women critics. Literary historian Margaret Beetham points
out the role played by periodicals in nineteenth-century cultural defi-
nition, arguing that the periodical was the locus at which “writers,
editors, publishers and readers engaged in trying to understand them-
selves and their society ... to make their world meaningful.” Those who
controlled the location of the defining process also controlled the defi-
nition itself: “Those who owned, edited and wrote for the nineteenth-
century periodical press had more power to define their world and
‘make their meanings stick’” (20). Because the great power wielded
by periodical editors and contributors in defining Victorian literary
norms and tastes has long been recognized, extraordinary efforts have
been undertaken since the mid-twentieth century to identify both who
those individuals were and precisely what their influence was.
Beginning with the Wellesley Project and continuing in the work of
the Research Society of Victorian Periodicals (RSVP), the Society for
the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP), and
others, scholars have continued to identify the anonymous contribu-
tors to nineteenth-century reviews and magazines and to publicize
their work. As the identification process has continued, dozens of
influential women critics have emerged from obscurity.
Of course, the cloak of anonymity was one of the major reasons so
many Victorian women were able to establish themselves firmly within
the critical field: until the last decades of the century, the identities of
most periodical contributors—men and women—were concealed.
Anonymous publication helped to preserve a sense of corporate iden-
tity for the different periodicals: the Saturday Review or Blackwood’s
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Edinburgh Magazine, for example, presented an outward consistency
reinforced by the magazine’s suppression of its individual contribu-
tors’ identities. This practice of anonymity meant that a woman
contributor who could write well in a particular periodical’s style or
tone was not automatically barred from assuming the critical pen;
indeed, in some cases, individual women writers were explicitly sought
out. Geraldine Jewsbury reviewed fiction for the Athenaeum for
decades, due to her presumed insight into what women novel-readers
would prefer, and Eliza Lynn Linton was invited to join the staff of the
Saturday Review because the editor knew she could adopt the maga-
zine’s acerbic style. The identities of Jewsbury, Lynn Linton, and other
contributors were frequently known to publishing insiders, but by not
calling attention to the names—and thus the genders—the illusion
that women were not in fact influential critics could be sustained.
Ironically, yet another factor in some women’s success as critics was
the very cultural bias against women as authorities that sought to bar
them from criticism. Historian Judith Newton suggests that women’s
position as consummate outsiders gave them the necessary critical
distance to comment objectively on both social and literary matters:
“Their more marginal position in relation to the market and the profes-
sional public world made them even better placed than professional
men to enact the role of social ‘crank,’ to offer social analyses and
critiques of the very market or social relations on which their class posi-
tion to some degree hinged” (2). The benefits of being an outsider
were attested to by Harriet Martineau, who in her Autobiography cred-
ited her invalidism and subsequent withdrawal from London to the
countryside with providing her the necessary distance from events to
see and comment on them more clearly. It may also explain the case of
Anne Mozley, who continued to shield her identity even when repub-
lishing her critical essays in book form.
The 18 Victorian women critics brought together in the pages of this
anthology assumed their positions of authority for a variety of reasons
and adapted to or challenged Victorian gender ideology to very differ-
ent degrees. The two earliest critics, Anna Jameson and Harriet
Martineau, turned to writing out of financial need and were relatively
undaunted by Victorian assumptions about women’s authority: both
introduction
xiii
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published (or republished) their work under their own names without
apology. A significant number of the women capitalized on the fact that
they had already established their literary reputations in other genres,
most notably fiction. Charlotte Brontë, Dinah Mulock Craik, M.E.
Braddon, Margaret Oliphant, and Eliza Lynn Linton all assumed their
critical authority to one degree or another on the basis of their insider’s
knowledge of how novels worked; Eliza Cook and Janet Hamilton made
their reputations first as poets, adding criticism to their oeuvres later
in their careers. George Eliot reversed the trend by serving her literary
apprenticeship first as translator, editor, and critic, and then turning to
fiction, where her expertise quickly catapulted her to the top of her
profession. Family connections played a major role in creating profes-
sional opportunities for several of the women: Anne Thackeray Ritchie
and Mary Augusta Ward had illustrious literary relatives (Ritchie’s
father was novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, and Ward was the
niece of poet and critic Matthew Arnold); Anne Mozley came from a
family of publishers and booksellers and followed her brothers into
journalism; and Alice Meynell collaborated with her journalist
husband. Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake and Elizabeth Julia Hassell both
showed extraordinary promise as scholars and turned to critical writ-
ing as a natural outlet for their intellectual abilities. Helen Blackburn
moved into journalism as an extension of her activism within the
Langham Place women’s movement. 
Not only are the backgrounds and motivations of these critics quite
different, but their styles and perspectives are as well. The essays
included here range from topical reviews of particular texts to appre-
ciations of individual authors to character studies to assessments of the
state of contemporary literature and criticism. Martineau highlights
Scott’s contributions to the development of the realist novel, while
Eastlake, Jewsbury, and Oliphant predict the demise of the form in the
wake of the new sensation fiction. Charlotte Brontë, Craik, Ritchie, and
Ward offer examples of biographical criticism, locating the works of
Emily Brontë, George Eliot, and Jane Austen in the contexts of their
lives and times. Hasell and Meynell both offer critical reappraisals of
major poets of the day; in Hasell’s case, she offers one of the earliest
reassessments of Robert Browning’s work. Writing in a very different
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key, Eliot, Cook, and Braddon employ wit to brilliant effect in satirical
critiques of women’s fiction, utilitarian philosophy, and the state of
contemporary criticism. Jameson, Eliot, and Blackburn all expressly
concern themselves with the status of women in society, Jameson
through the lens of Shakespeare’s characterization of Portia, and Eliot
and Blackburn through analyses of women’s achievements in literature.
Hamilton, herself a self-educated working-class poet, lauds the benefits
of literature for other working-class individuals, and Mozley stresses the
benefits of fiction in fostering the next generation of poetic genius. 
Between them, these women represent the full spectrum of
Victorian society—from the self-taught working-class poet Hamilton
to the manor-born Hasell, from the stubbornly antifeminist Lynn
Linton to the radical Blackburn, from the self-effacing Mozley and
Oliphant to the self-promoting Braddon. Arranged in chronological
order by date of publication, the essays gathered together here reveal
just how rich and diverse Victorian women’s critical prose truly is. To
borrow from Helen Blackburn’s conclusion in her essay imagining a
library of books by women authors, such essays as these “should tend
to heighten the increasing respect for women’s capacities, increase
respect for their latent powers in the hearts of women themselves, and
respect for the value of women’s work in the hearts of men.”
REFERENCES
Beetham, Margaret. “Towards a Theory of the Periodical as a
Publishing Genre.” Investigating Victorian Journalism. Ed. Laurel
Brake, Aled Jones, and Lionel Madden. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1990. 19–32.
Flint, Kate. The Woman Reader, 1837–1914. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1993.
Newton, Judith. “Engendering History for the Middle Class: Sex and
Political Economy in the Edinburgh Review.” Rewriting the
Victorians: Theory, History, and the Politics of Gender. Ed. Linda M.
Shires. New York: Routledge, 1992. 1–17.
Tuchman, Gaye, with Nina E. Fortin. Edging Women Out: Victorian
Novelists, Publishers, and Social Change. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1989.
introduction
xv
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anna brownell murphy (1794–1860) was born in
Dublin, the daughter of an Irish portrait painter and his
English wife. After working some years as a governess, she
married barrister Robert Jameson in 1825. The marriage was
unsuccessful, and the couple lived apart for many years before
formally separating in 1837. Driven by a need to support
herself, she early turned to writing. While her first published
work was fiction—The Diary of an Ennuyée (1826) was based on
a travel journal she kept while working as a governess—she
made her mark as an author of nonfiction prose.
Although she made significant contributions to the fields
of biography and travel writing during the 1820s and 1830s,
Jameson is probably best remembered for her aesthetic and
social criticism, which she began writing in the 1840s. Based
on research conducted during her extensive travels in Britain
and on the Continent, she published several popular gallery
guides, numerous articles, and an important four-volume
work on Sacred and Legendary Art (1848–64). (The final
volume, The History of Our Lord as Exemplified in Works of Art,
was completed after her death by her friend and fellow critic,
Lady Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake.) Jameson was acknowledged
as an important art critic during her lifetime and was widely
read and admired both in Europe and in the United States.
Jameson was also an important figure in the nineteenth-
century women’s movement. Her own experiences convinced
1
CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT: PORTIA
(1832)
Anna Jameson 
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her of the importance of expanding educational and
employment opportunities for women, and several of her
early publications focused on the condition of women both
in the past and during her own time. The biographical
sketches The Loves of the Poets (1829) and Memoirs of the
Celebrated Female Sovereigns (1831) presented historical women
and paved the way for Characteristics of Women (1832), an
examination of how Shakespeare’s heroines exemplified
aspects of women’s lives and opportunities. In the 1840s and
1850s she was an active mentor of the Langham Place femi-
nists, presenting and publishing two influential lectures,
Sisters of Charity (1855) and The Communion of Labour (1856),
on the importance of women leading useful lives. 
Jameson died in 1860 from pneumonia, after having
caught cold while working in the British Library on the last
volume of Sacred and Legendary Art. Her obituary in the
London Daily News, written by Harriet Martineau, declares
that “long after [her works] have ceased to be sought and
regularly read, some touch of nature in them, some trait of
insight, or ingenuity of solution will come up in fireside
conversation, or in literary intercourse, and remind a future
generation that in ours there was a restless, expatiating,
fervent, unreasoning, generous, accomplished Mrs. Jameson
among the lights of the time.”
The following excerpt is taken from Characteristics of Women,
which was issued in later editions as Shakespeare’s Heroines. As the
title suggests, Jameson uses fictional figures to analyze how real
women’s characters and behaviours are shaped by circumstance
and experience. In the process, as critic Anne E. Russell notes,
she simultaneously holds up models of ideal feminine behaviour
and challenges the assumptions upon which traditional models
of womanliness are based. In the first chapter of Shakespeare’s
Heroines, Jameson examines Portia (from The Merchant of Venice),
Isabella (Measure for Measure), Beatrice (Much Ado About Nothing),
and Rosalind (As You Like It) as exemplary “Characters of
Intellect.” Portia embodies what Jameson considers to be an
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2
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especially womanly form of intellect: while she exhibits intellec-
tual powers comparable to any man’s, these powers are less “self-
directed” and instead “in a much greater degree modified by the
sympathies and moral qualities.” Yet while Jameson admires
Portia for her sweetness and skill in employing her intellect on
others’ behalf, she warns that a Portia in the Victorian age would
be not victor but victim, doomed by “Opinion” either to suppress
her own nature or, in affirming and exercising it, to become
rebellious, proud, and rigid.
we hear it asserted , not seldom by way of compliment to us
women, that intellect is of no sex. If this mean that the same faculties
of mind are common to men and women, it is true; in any other signi-
fication it appears to me false, and the reverse of a compliment. The
intellect of woman bears the same relation to that of man as her phys-
ical organization;—it is inferior in power, and different in kind. That
certain women have surpassed certain men in bodily strength or intel-
lectual energy does not contradict the general principle founded in
nature. The essential and invariable distinction appears to me this: in
men, the intellectual faculties exist more self-poised and self-
directed—more independent of the rest of the character, than we ever
find them in women, with whom talent, however predominant, is in a
much greater degree modified by the sympathies and moral qualities.
In thinking over all the distinguished women I can at this moment
call to mind, I recollect but one who, in the exercise of a rare talent,
belied her sex; but the moral qualities had been first perverted.
1
It is
from not knowing, or not allowing this general principle, that men
of genius have committed some signal mistakes. They have given us
exquisite and just delineations of the more peculiar characteristics of
characters of intellect: portia
3
1
Artemisia Gentileschi, an Italian artist of the seventeenth century, painted one or two
pictures, considered admirable as works of art, of which the subjects are the most vicious
and barbarous conceivable. I remember one of these in the gallery of Florence, which
I looked at once, but once, and wished then, as I do now, for the privilege of burning
it to ashes. [Author’s note.]
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women, as modesty, grace, tenderness; and when they have attempted
to portray them with the powers common to both sexes, as wit, energy,
intellect, they have blundered in some respect; they could form no
conception of intellect which was not masculine, and therefore have
either suppressed the feminine attributes altogether and drawn
coarse caricatures, or they have made them completely artificial.
1
Women distinguished for wit may sometimes appear masculine and
flippant, but the cause must be sought elsewhere than in nature, who
disclaims all such. Hence the witty and intellectual ladies of our come-
dies and novels are all in the fashion of some particular time; they are
like some old portraits which can still amuse and please by the beauty
of the workmanship, in spite of the graceless costume or grotesque
accompaniments, but from which we turn to worship with ever new
delight the Floras and goddesses of Titian, the saints and the virgins
of Raffaelle and Domenichino. So the Millamants and Belindas, the
Lady Townleys and Lady Teazles, are out of date, while Portia and
Rosalind, in whom nature and the feminine character are paramount,
remain bright and fresh to the fancy as when first created.
Portia, Isabella, Beatrice, and Rosalind, may be classed together as
characters of intellect, because, when compared with others, they are
at once distinguished by their mental superiority. In Portia, is intel-
lect kindled into romance by a poetical imagination; in Isabel, it is
intellect elevated by religious principle; in Beatrice, intellect animated
by spirit; in Rosalind, intellect softened by sensibility. The wit which
is lavished on each is profound, or pointed, or sparkling, or playful—
but always feminine: like spirits distilled from flowers, it always
reminds us of its origin; it is a volatile essence, sweet as powerful; and
to pursue the comparison a step further, the wit of Portia is like attar
of roses, rich and concentrated; that of Rosalind, like cotton dipped
in aromatic vinegar; the wit of Beatrice is like sal-volatile, and that of
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4
1
Lucy Ashton, in the Bride of Lammermoor, may be placed next to Desdemona; Diana
Vernon is (comparatively) a failure, as every woman will allow; while the masculine Lady
Geraldine, in Miss Edgeworth’s tale of Ennui, and the intellectual Corinne, are consis-
tent, essential women: the distinction is more easily felt than analyzed. [Author’s note.]
Diana Vernon and Corinne are characters in Walter Scott’s Rob Roy (1817) and in the
French-Swiss writer Germaine de Staël’s (1766–1816) 1807 novel by that name.
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Isabel like the incense wafted to heaven. Of these four exquisite char-
acters, considered as dramatic and poetical conceptions, it is difficult
to pronounce which is most perfect in its way, most admirably drawn,
most highly finished. But if considered in another point of view, as
women and individuals, as breathing realities, clothed in flesh and
blood, I believe we must assign the first rank to Portia, as uniting in
herself, in a more eminent degree than the others, all the noblest and
most lovable qualities that ever met together in woman, and present-
ing a complete personification of Petrarch’s exquisite epitome of
female perfection:
Il vago spirito ardento,
E’n alto intelletto, un puro core.
1
It is singular that hitherto no critical justice has been done to the
character of Portia; yet more wonderful that one of the finest writers
on the eternal subject of Shakespeare and his perfections should accuse
Portia of pedantry and affectation, and confess she is not a great
favorite of his—a confession quite worthy of him who avers his predilec-
tion for servant-maids, and his preference of the Fannys and the
Pamelas over the Clementinas and Clarissas. Schlegel,
2
who has given
several pages to a rapturous eulogy on the Merchant of Venice, simply
designates Portia as a “rich, beautiful, clever heiress.” Whether the fault
lie in the writer or translator, I do protest against the word clever.
3
Portia clever! What an epithet to apply to this heavenly compound of
talent, feeling, wisdom, beauty, and gentleness! Now would it not be
well if this common and comprehensive word were more accurately
defined, or at least more accurately used? It signifies properly, not so
much the possession of high powers as dexterity in the adaptation of
certain faculties (not necessarily of a high order) to a certain end or
aim—not always the worthiest. It implies something commonplace,
characters of intellect: portia
5
1
“The wandering ardent spirit, with a pure heart within a high intellect.” Jameson
combines lines from two of Petrarch’s (1304–74) poems idealizing Laura. 
2
August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767–1845), German scholar and critic.
3
I am informed that the original German word is geistreiche; literally “rich in soul or spirit,”
a just and beautiful epithet. [Author’s note.]
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inasmuch as it speaks the presence of the active and perceptive, with a
deficiency of the feeling and reflective powers; and, applied to a woman,
does it not almost invariably suggest the idea of something we should
distrust or shrink from, if not allied to a higher nature? The profligate
French women who ruled the councils of Europe in the middle of the
last century, were clever women; and that philosopheress, Madame du
Châtelet,
1
who managed at one and the same moment the thread of
an intrigue, her cards at piquet, and a calculation in algebra, was a very
clever woman! If Portia had been created as a mere instrument to bring
about a dramatic catastrophe—if she had merely detected the flaw in
Antonio’s bond and used it as a means to baffle the Jew, she might have
been pronounced a clever woman. But what Portia does is forgotten in
what she is. The rare and harmonious blending of energy, reflection,
and feeling, in her fine character, makes the epithet clever sound like a
discord as applied to her, and places her infinitely beyond the slight
praise of Richardson
2
and Schlegel, neither of whom appears to have
fully comprehended her.
These and other critics have been apparently so dazzled and
engrossed by the amazing character of Shylock, that Portia has
received less than justice at their hands; while the fact is, that Shylock
is not a finer or more finished character in his way than Portia is in
hers. These two splendid figures are worthy of each other—worthy of
being placed together within the same rich framework of enchanting
poetry and glorious and graceful forms. She hangs beside the terri-
ble inexorable Jew, the brilliant lights of her character set off by the
shadowy power of his, like a magnificent beauty-breathing Titian by
the side of a gorgeous Rembrandt.
Portia is endued with her own share of those delightful qualities
which Shakespeare has lavished on many of his female characters; but
besides the dignity, the sweetness, and tenderness which should distin-
guish her sex generally, she is individualized by qualities peculiar to
herself; by her high mental powers, her enthusiasm of temperament,
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6
1
Emilie du Châtelet (1706–49), mathematician and physicist, companion of Voltaire,
and translator of Newton.
2
Samuel Richardson (1689–1761), English novelist.
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her decision of purpose, and her buoyancy of spirit. These are innate;
she has other distinguishing qualities more external, and which are
the result of the circumstances in which she is placed. Thus she is the
heiress of a princely name and countless wealth; a train of obedient
pleasures have ever waited round her; and from infancy she has
breathed an atmosphere redolent of perfume and blandishment.
Accordingly there is a commanding grace, a high-bred, airy elegance,
a spirit of magnificence, in all that she does and says, as one to whom
splendor had been familiar from her very birth. She treads as though
her footsteps had been among marble palaces, beneath roofs of fret-
ted gold, o’er cedar floors and pavements of jasper and porphyry;
amid gardens full of statues, and flowers, and fountains, and haunt-
ing music. She is full of penetrative wisdom, and genuine tenderness,
and lively wit; but as she has never known want, or grief, or fear, or
disappointment, her wisdom is without a touch of the sombre or the
sad; her affections are all mixed up with faith, hope, and joy; and her
wit has not a particle of malevolence or causticity.
It is well known that the Merchant of Venice is founded on two differ-
ent tales; and in weaving together his double plot in so masterly a
manner, Shakespeare has rejected altogether the character of the
astutious lady of Belmont with her magic potions, who figures in the
Italian novel. With yet more refinement, he has thrown out all the
licentious part of the story, which some of his contemporary drama-
tists would have seized on with avidity, and made the best or the worst
of it possible; and lie has substituted the trial of the caskets from
another source.
1
We are not told expressly where Belmont is situated;
but as Bassanio takes ship to go thither from Venice, and as we find
them afterwards ordering horses from Belmont to Padua, we will
imagine Portia’s hereditary palace as standing on some lovely
promontory overlooking the blue Adriatic, with the Friuli mountains
or the Euganean hills for its background, such as we often see in one
of Claude’s or Poussin’s elysian landscapes. In a scene, in a home like
characters of intellect: portia
7
1
In the Mercatante di Venezia, of Ser. Giovanni, we have the whole story of Antonio and
Bassanio, and part of the story but not the character of Portia. The incident of the
caskets is from the Gesta Romanorum. [Author’s note.]
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this, Shakespeare, having first exorcised the original possessor, has
placed his Portia: and so endowed her, that all the wild, strange, and
moving circumstances of the story become natural, probable, and
necessary in connection with her. That such a woman should be
chosen by the solving of an enigma is not surprising: herself and all
around her, the scene, the country, the age in which she is placed,
breathe of poetry, romance, and enchantment.
1
•••
The sudden plan which she forms for the release of her husband’s
friend, her disguise, and her deportment as the young and learned
doctor, would appear forced and improbable in any other woman,
but in Portia are the simple and natural result of her character.
2
The
quickness with which she perceives the legal advantage which may be
taken of the circumstances; the spirit of adventure with which she
engages in the masquerading, and the decision, firmness, and intel-
ligence with which she executes her generous purpose, are all in
perfect keeping, and nothing appears forced—nothing is introduced
merely for theatrical effect.
But all the finest parts of Portia’s character are brought to bear in
the trial scene. There she shines forth all her divine self. Her intel-
lectual powers, her elevated sense of religion, her high, honorable
principles, her best feelings as a woman, are all displayed. She main-
tains at first a calm self-command, as one sure of carrying her point
in the end! yet the painful heart-thrilling uncertainty in which she
keeps the whole court, until suspense verges upon agony, is not
contrived for effect merely; it is necessary and inevitable. She has two
objects in view—to deliver her husband’s friend, and to maintain her
husband’s honor by the discharge of his just debt, though paid out of
her own wealth ten times over. It is evident that she would rather owe
a serious occupation
8
1
See Merchant of Venice 2.7.39–47.
2
In that age, delicate points of law were not determined by the ordinary judges of the
province, but by doctors of law, who were called from Bologna, Padua, and other places
celebrated for their legal colleges. [Author’s note.]
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the safety of Antonio to anything rather than the legal quibble with
which her cousin Bellario has armed her, and which she reserves as a
last resource. Thus all the speeches addressed to Shylock in the first
instance are either direct or indirect experiments on his temper and
feelings. She must be understood, from the beginning to the end, as
examining with intense anxiety the effect of her own words on his
mind and countenance; as watching for that relenting spirit which
she hopes to awaken either by reason or persuasion. She begins by an
appeal to his mercy, in that matchless piece of eloquence which, with
an irresistible and solemn pathos, falls upon the heart like “gentle
dew from heaven”:—but in vain; for that blessed dew drops not more
fruitless and unfelt on the parched sand of the desert, than do these
heavenly words upon the ear of Shylock. She next attacks his avarice:
Shylock, there’s thrice thy money offer’d thee.
Then she appeals, in the same breath, both to his avarice and his pity:
Be merciful!
Take thrice thy money. Bid me tear the bond.
All that she says afterwards—her strong expressions, which are calcu-
lated to strike a shuddering horror through the nerves; the reflec-
tions she interposes, her delays and circumlocution to give time for
any latent feeling of commiseration to display itself; all, all are
premeditated, and tend in the same manner to the object she has in
view. Thus—
You must prepare your bosom for his knife.
Therefore lay bare your bosom!
These two speeches, though addressed apparently to Antonio, are
spoken at Shylock, and are evidently intended to penetrate his bosom.
In the same spirit she asks for the balance to weigh the pound of flesh;
and entreats of Shylock to have a surgeon ready—
characters of intellect: portia
9
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PORTIA: Have by some surgeon, Shylock, on your charge,
To stop his wounds lest he do bleed to death!
SHYLOCK: Is it not so nominated in the bond?
PORTIA: It is not so express’d—but what of that?
’Twere good you do so much, for charity.
So unwilling is her sanguine and generous spirit to resign all hope,
or to believe that humanity is absolutely extinct in the bosom of the
Jew, that she calls on Antonio, as a last resource, to speak for himself.
His gentle yet manly resignation—the deep pathos of his farewell, and
the affectionate allusion to herself in his last address to Bassanio—
Commend me to your honourable wife;
Say how I loved you, speak me fair in death, &c.
are well calculated to swell that emotion which through the whole
scene must have been laboring suppressed within her heart.
At length the crisis arrives, for patience and womanhood can
endure no longer; and when Shylock, carrying his savage bent “to the
last hour of act,” springs on his victim—“A sentence! come, prepare!”
then the smothered scorn, indignation, and disgust burst forth with
an impetuosity which interferes with the judicial solemnity she had
at first affected; particularly in the speech—
Therefore, prepare thee to cut off the flesh.
Shed thou no blood; nor cut thou less, nor more,
But just the pound of flesh: if thou tak’st more
Or less than a just pound—be it but so much
As makes it light, or heavy, in the substance,
Or the division of the twentieth part
Of one poor scruple; nay, if the scale do turn
But in the estimation of a hair,—
Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate.
But she afterwards recovers her propriety, and triumphs with a cooler
scorn and a more selfpossessed exultation.
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It is clear that, to feel the full force and dramatic beauty of this
marvellous scene, we must go along with Portia as well as with
Shylock; we must understand her concealed purpose, keep in mind
her noble motives, and pursue in our fancy the undercurrent of feel-
ing, working in her mind throughout. The terror and the power of
Shylock’s character,—his deadly and inexorable malice—would be
too oppressive; the pain and pity too intolerable, and the horror of
the possible issue too overwhelming, but for the intellectual relief
afforded by this double source of interest and contemplation.
I come now to that capacity for warm and generous affection, that
tenderness of heart, which render Portia not less lovable as a woman
than admirable for her mental endowments. The affections are to the
intellect what the forge is to the metal; it is they which temper and
shape it to all good purposes, and soften, strengthen, and purify it.
What an exquisite stroke of judgment in the poet, to make the mutual
passion of Portia and Bassanio, though unacknowledged to each
other, anterior to the opening of the play! Bassanio’s confession very
properly comes first:—
BASSANIO: In Belmont is a lady richly left,
And she is fair, and fairer than that word,
Of wondrous virtues; sometimes from her eyes
I did receive fair speechless messages;
and prepares us for Portia’s half-betrayed, unconscious election of
this most graceful and chivalrous admirer—
NERISSA: Do you not remember, lady, in your father’s time, a
Venetian, a scholar, and a soldier, that came hither in company
of the Marquis of Montferrat?
PORTIA: Yes, yes, it was Bassanio; as I think, so he was called.
NERISSA: True, madam; he of all the men that ever my foolish
eyes looked upon was the best deserving a fair lady.
PORTIA: I remember him well; and I remember him worthy of
thy praise.
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11
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Our interest is thus awakened for the lovers from the very first; and
what shall be said of the casket scene with Bassanio, where every line
which Portia speaks is so worthy of herself, so full of sentiment and
beauty, and poetry, and passion? Too naturally frank for disguise, too
modest to confess her depth of love while the issue of the trial
remains in suspense, the conflict between love and fear, and maid-
enly dignity, cause the most delicious confusion that ever tinged a
woman’s cheek or dropped in broken utterance from her lips.
1
•••
The short dialogue between the lovers is exquisite.
BASSANIO: Let me choose;
For, as I am, I live upon the rack.
PORTIA: Upon the rack, Bassanio? Then confess
What treason there is mingled with your love.
BASSANIO: None, but that ugly treason of mistrust,
Which makes me fear the enjoying of my love.
There may as well be amity and life
’Tween snow and fire, as treason and my love.
PORTIA: Ay! but I fear you speak upon the rack,
Where men enforced do speak anything,
BASSANIO: Promise me life, and I’ll confess the truth.
PORTIA: Well then, confess, and live.
BASSANIO: Confess and love
Had been the very sum of my confession!
O happy torment, when my torturer
Doth teach me answers for deliverance!
A prominent feature in Portia’s character is that confiding, buoy-
ant spirit which mingles with all her thoughts and affections. And here
let me observe, that I never yet met in real life, nor ever read in tale
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12
1
See Merchant of Venice 3.2.1–18.
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or history, of any woman, distinguished for intellect of the highest
order, who was not also remarkable for this trusting spirit, this hope-
fulness and cheerfulness of temper, which is compatible with the most
serious habits of thought and the most profound sensibility. Lady
Wortley Montagu
1
was one instance; and Madame de Staël furnishes
another much more memorable. In her Corinne, whom she drew
from herself, this natural brightness of temper is a prominent part of
the character. A disposition to doubt, to suspect, and to despond, in
the young, argues, in general, some inherent weakness, moral or phys-
ical, or some miserable and radical error of education; in the old, it is
one of the first symptoms of age: it speaks of the influence of sorrow
and experience, and foreshows the decay of the stronger and more
generous powers of the soul. Portia’s strength of intellect takes a natu-
ral tinge from the flush and bloom of her young and prosperous exis-
tence, and from her fervid imagination. In the casket scene, she fears
indeed the issue of the trial, on which more than her life is hazarded;
but, while she trembles, her hope is stronger than her fear. While
Bassanio is contemplating the caskets, she suffers herself to dwell for
one moment on the possibility of disappointment and misery.
Let music sound while he doth make his choice;
Then if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,
Fading in music: that the comparison
May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream
And wat’ry death-bed for him.
Then immediately follows that revulsion of feeling, so beautifully
characteristic of the hopeful, trusting, mounting spirit of this noble
creature.
But he may win!
And what is music then?—then music is
Even as the flourish, when true subjects bow
characters of intellect: portia
13
1
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762), poet, letter-writer, and essayist.
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To a new-crowned monarch: such it is
As are those dulcet sounds at break of day
That creep into the dreaming bridegroom’s ear
And summon him to marriage. Now he goes
With no less presence, but with much more love,
Than young Alcides, when he did redeem
The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy
To the sea monster. I stand here for sacrifice.
Here, not only the feeling itself, born of the elastic and sanguine
spirit which had never been touched by grief; but the images in which
it comes arrayed to her fancy,—the bridegroom waked by music on
his wedding-morn,—the new-crowned monarch,—the comparison of
Bassanio to the young Alcides, and of herself to the daughter of
Laomedon, are all precisely what would have suggested themselves to
the fine poetical imagination of Portia in such a moment.
Her passionate exclamations of delight when Bassanio has fixed
on the right casket, are as strong as though she had despaired before.
Fear and doubt she could repel;—the native elasticity of her mind
bore up against them; yet she makes us feel that, as the sudden joy
overpowers her almost to fainting, the disappointment would as
certainly have killed her.
How all the other passions fleet to air,
As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embrac’d despair,
And shuddering fear, and green-ey’d jealousy!
O love! be moderate, allay thy ecstasy;
In measure rain thy joy, scant this excess:
I feel too much thy blessing; make it less,
For fear I surfeit!
Her subsequent surrender of herself in heart and soul, of her
maiden freedom, and her vast possessions, can never be read without
deep emotion; for not only all the tenderness and delicacy of a devoted
woman are here blended with all the dignity which becomes the
princely heiress of Belmont, but the serious, measured self-possession
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of her address to her lover, when all suspense is over, and all conceal-
ment superfluous, is most beautifully consistent with the character. It
is, in truth, an awful moment, that in which a gifted woman first discov-
ers, that, besides talents and powers, she has also passions and affec-
tions; when she first begins to suspect their vast importance in the sum
of her existence; when she first confesses that her happiness is no
longer in her own keeping, but is surrendered for ever and for ever
into the dominion of another! The possession of uncommon powers
of mind are so far from affording relief or resource in the first intox-
icating surprise—I had almost said terror—of such a revolution, that
they render it more intense. The sources of thought multiply beyond
calculation the sources of feeling; and mingled, they rush together, a
torrent as deep as strong. Because Portia is endued with that enlarged
comprehension which looks before and after, she does not feel the
less, but the more: because from the height of her commanding intel-
lect she can contemplate the force, the tendency, the consequences of
her own sentiments—because she is fully sensible of her own situation
and the value of all she concedes—the concession is not made with
less entireness and devotion of heart, less confidence in the truth and
worth of her lover, than when Juliet, in a similar moment, but without
any such intrusive reflections—any check but the instinctive delicacy
of her sex, flings herself and her fortunes at the feet of her lover:
And all my fortunes at thy feet I’ll lay,
And follow thee, my lord, through all the world.
1
In Portia’s confession, which is not breathed from a moon-lit balcony,
but spoken openly in the presence of her attendants and vassals, there
is nothing of the passionate self-abandonment of Juliet, nor of the
artless simplicity of Miranda, but a consciousness and a tender seri-
ousness, approaching to solemnity, which are not less touching.
2
characters of intellect: portia
15
1
Romeo and Juliet, act ii. scene 2. [Author’s note.]
2
See Merchant of Venice 3.2.149–71.
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•••
We must also remark that the sweetness, the solicitude, the subdued
fondness which she afterwards displays relative to the letter, are as true
to the softness of her sex as the generous selfdenial with which she urges
the departure of Bassanio (having first given him a husband’s right over
herself and all her countless wealth) is consistent with a reflecting mind,
and a spirit at once tender, reasonable, and magnanimous.
It is not only in the trial scene that Portia’s acuteness, eloquence,
and lively intelligence are revealed to us; they are displayed in the first
instance, and kept up consistently to the end. Her reflections, arising
from the most usual aspects of nature and from the commonest inci-
dents of life, are in such a poetical spirit, and are at the same time so
pointed, so profound, that they have passed into familiar and daily
application with all the force of proverbs.
If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels
had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces.
I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be
one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.
The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark,
When neither is attended; and I think
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.
How many things by season seasoned are
To their right praise and true perfection!
How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
A substitute shines as brightly as a king,
Until a king be by; and then his state
Empties itself, as doth an inland brook
Into the main of waters.
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Her reflections on the friendship between her husband and
Antonio are as full of deep meaning as of tenderness; and her portrait
of a young coxcomb, in the same scene, is touched with a truth and
spirit which show with what a keen observing eye she has looked upon
men and things.
——I’ll hold thee any wager,
When we are both accoutred like young men,
I’ll prove the prettier fellow of the two,
And wear my dagger with a braver grace;
And speak between the change of man and boy
With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps
Into a manly stride; and speak of frays
Like a fine bragging youth; and tell quaint lies—
How honourable ladies sought my love,
Which I denying, they fell sick and died;
I could not do with all: then I’ll repent,
And wish, for all that, that I had not killed them:
And twenty of these puny lies I’ll tell,
That men shall swear I have discontinued school
Above a twelvemonth.
And in the description of her various suitors, in the first scene with
Nerissa, what infinite power, wit, and vivacity! She half checks herself
as she is about to give the reins to her sportive humor: “In truth, I
know it is a sin to be a mocker.” But if it carries her away, it is so
perfectly good-natured, so temperately bright, so lady-like, it is ever
without offence; and so far most unlike the satirical, poignant, unspar-
ing wit of Beatrice, “misprising what she looks on.” In fact, I can scarce
conceive a greater contrast than between the vivacity of Portia and
the vivacity of Beatrice. Portia, with all her airy brilliance, is supremely
soft and dignified; everything she says or does displays her capability
for profound thought and feeling as well as her lively and romantic
disposition; and as I have seen in an Italian garden a fountain fling-
ing round its wreaths of showery light, while the many-colored Iris
hung brooding above it, in its calm and soul-felt glory; so in Portia
characters of intellect: portia
17
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the wit is ever kept subordinate to the poetry, and we still feel the
tender, the intellectual, and the imaginative part of the character, as
superior to, and presiding over, its spirit and vivacity.
In the last act, Shylock and his machinations being dismissed from
our thoughts, and the rest of the dramatis personae. assembled together
at Belmont, all our interest and all our attention are rivetted on
Portia, and the conclusion leaves the most delightful impression on
the fancy. The playful equivoque of the rings, the sportive trick she
puts on her husband, and her thorough enjoyment of the jest, which
she checks just as it is proceeding beyond the bounds of propriety,
show how little she was displeased by the sacrifice of her gift, and are
all consistent with her bright and buoyant spirit. In conclusion, when
Portia invites her company to enter her palace to refresh themselves
after their travels, and talk over “these events at full,” the imagination,
unwilling to lose sight of the brilliant group, follows them in gay
procession from the lovely moonlight garden to marble halls and
princely revels, to splendor and festive mirth, to love and happiness!
Many women have possessed many of those qualities which render
Portia so delightful. She is in herself a piece of reality, in whose possi-
ble existence we have no doubt; and yet a human being, in whom the
moral, intellectual, and sentient faculties should be so exquisitely
blended and proportioned to each other—and these again, in
harmony with all outward aspects and influences—probably never
existed; certainly could not now exist. A woman constituted like
Portia, and placed in this age and in the actual state of society, would
find society armed against her; and instead of being like Portia, a
gracious, happy, beloved, and loving creature, would be a victim,
immolated in fire to that multitudinous Moloch termed Opinion.
With her, the world without would be at war with the world within: in
the perpetual strife, either her nature would “be subdued to the
element it worked in,” and, bending to a necessity it could neither
escape nor approve, lose at last something of its original brightness,
or otherwise—a perpetual spirit of resistance cherished as a safe-
guard, might perhaps in the end destroy the equipage; firmness
would become pride and self-assurance, and the soft, sweet, feminine
texture of the mind settle into rigidity. Is there then no sanctuary for
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such a mind?—Where shall it find a refuge from the world?—Where
seek for strength against itself? Where, but in heaven?
Camiola, in Massinger’s Maid of Honour,
1
is said to emulate Portia;
and the real story of Camiola (for she is an historical personage) is
very beautiful. She was a lady of Messina, who lived in the beginning
of the fourteenth century; and was the contemporary of Queen
Joanna, of Petrarch, and Boccaccio. It fell out in those days that
Prince Orlando of Arragon, the younger brother of the King of Sicily,
having taken the command of a naval armament against the
Neapolitans, was defeated, wounded, taken prisoner, and confined by
Robert of Naples (the father of Queen Joanna) in one of his strongest
castles. As the prince had distinguished himself by his enmity to the
Neapolitans and by many exploits against them, his ransom was fixed
at an exorbitant sum, and his captivity was unusually severe; while the
King of Sicily, who had some cause of displeasure against his brother,
and imputed to him the defeat of his armament, refused either to
negotiate for his release or to pay the ransom demanded.
Orlando, who was celebrated for his fine person and reckless valor,
was apparently doomed to languish away the rest of his life in a
dungeon, when Camiola Turinga, a rich Sicilian heiress, devoted the
half of her fortune to release him. But as such an action might expose
her to evil comments, she made it a condition that Orlando should
marry her. The prince gladly accepted the terms, and sent her the
contract of marriage, signed by his hand; but no sooner was he at
liberty than he refused to fulfil it, and even denied all knowledge of
his benefactress.
Camiola appealed to the tribunal of state, produced the written
contract, and described the obligations she had heaped on this
ungrateful and ungenerous man: sentence was given against him, and
he was adjudged to Camiola, not only as her rightful husband, but as
a property which, according to the laws of war in that age, she had
purchased with her gold. The day of marriage was fixed; Orlando
characters of intellect: portia
19
1
Philip Massinger (1583–1640), English playwright. The Maid of Honour (ca. 1621–22)
is based on a story by Boccaccio, and the heroine, Camiola, is considered one of
Massinger’s best characters.
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presented himself with a splendid retinue; Camiola also appeared,
decorated as for her bridal; but instead of bestowing her hand on the
recreant, she reproached him in the presence of all with his breach
of faith, declared her utter contempt for his baseness, and then freely
bestowing on him the sum paid for his ransom, as a gift worthy of his
mean soul, she turned away, and dedicated herself and her heart to
heaven. In this resolution she remained inflexible, though the king
and all the court united in entreaties to soften her. She took the veil;
and Orlando, henceforth regarded as one who had stained his knight-
hood and violated his faith, passed the rest of his life as a dishonored
man, and died in obscurity.
Camiola, in The Maid of Honour, is, like Portia, a wealthy heiress,
surrounded by suitors, and “queen o’er herself”: the character is
constructed upon the same principles, as great intellectual power,
magnanimity of temper, and feminine tenderness; but not only do
pain and disquiet, and the change induced by unkind and inauspi-
cious influences, enter into this sweet picture to mar and cloud its
happy beauty, but the portrait itself may be pronounced out of draw-
ing;—for Massinger apparently had not sufficient delicacy of senti-
ment to work out his own conception of the character with perfect
consistency. In his adaptation of the story he represents the mutual
love of Orlando and Camiola as existing previous to the captivity of
the former, and on his part declared with many vows of eternal faith;
yet she requires a written contract of marriage before she liberates
him. It will perhaps be said that she has penetrated his weakness, and
anticipates his falsehood. Miserable excuse!—how could a magnani-
mous woman love a man whose falsehood she believes but possible?—
or loving him, how could she deign to secure herself by such means
against the consequences? Shakespeare and Nature never committed
such a solecism. Camiola doubts before she has been wronged; the
firmness and assurance in herself border on harshness. What in Portia
is the gentle wisdom of a noble nature appears in Camiola too much
a spirit of calculation; it savors a little of the counting-house. As Portia
is the heiress of Belmont, and Camiola a merchant’s daughter, the
distinction may be proper and characteristic, but it is not in favor of
Camiola. The contrast may be thus illustrated:
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CAMIOLA: You have heard of Bertoldo’s captivity, and the king’s
neglect, the greatness of his ransom; fifty thousand crowns. Adorni!
Two parts of my estate! Yet I so love the gentleman, for to you I will
confess my weakness, that I purpose now, when he is forsaken by the
king and his own hopes, to ransom him.—Maid of Honour, act iii.
PORTIA: What sum owes he the Jew?
BASSANIO: For me—three thousand ducats.
PORTIA: What? no more!
Pay him six thousand and deface the bond,
Double six thousand, and then treble that,
Before a friend of this description
Shall lose a hair thro’ my Bassanio’s fault.
—You shall have gold
To pay the petty debt twenty times o’er.—Merchant of Venice.
Camiola, who is a Sicilian, might as well have been born at
Amsterdam: Portia could only have existed in Italy. Portia is profound
as she is brilliant; Camiola is sensible and sententious: she asserts her
dignity very successfully; but we cannot for a moment imagine Portia
as reduced to the necessity of asserting hers. The idiot Sylli, in The
Maid of Honour, who follows Camiola like one of the deformed dwarfs
of old time, is an intolerable violation of taste and propriety, and it
sensibly lowers our impression of the principal character. Shakespeare
would never have placed Sir Andrew Aguecheek
1
in constant and
immediate approximation with such a woman as Portia.
Lastly, the charm of the poetical coloring is wholly wanting in
Camiola, so that when she is placed in contrast with the glowing
eloquence, the luxuriant grace, the buoyant spirit of Portia, the effect
is somewhat that of coldness and formality. Notwithstanding the dignity
and the beauty of Massinger’s delineation, and the noble self-devotion
of Camiola, which I acknowledge and admire, the two characters will
admit of no comparison as sources of contemplation and pleasure.
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21
1
Foolish suitor for Olivia in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.
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SOURCE 
Shakespeare’s Heroines: Characteristics of Women, Moral, Poetical and
Historical (1832).
SELECTED SECONDARY READING
Johnstone, Judith. Anna Jameson: Victorian, Feminist, Woman of Letters.
Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997.
Russell, Anne E. “‘History and Real Life’: Anna Jameson, Shakespeare’s
Heroines and Victorian Women.” Victorian Review 17.2 (Winter
1991): 35–49.
a serious occupation
22
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harriet martineau (1802–76) was born in Norwich
into a family of Unitarian textile manufacturers. Martineau’s
childhood was an unhappy one—in part because of her
increasing deafness—but she early turned to education and
study as a compensation for her feelings of isolation. She
began her journalistic career in the 1820s, publishing articles
about educational opportunities for women. Shortly after she
began to write, her father’s death and the failure of the family
business freed her forever from the constraints of traditional
middle-class feminine pursuits. As she described the situation
in her Autobiography: “I, who had been obliged to write before
breakfast, or in some private way, had henceforth liberty to
do my own work in my own way; for we had lost our gentility”;
this loss of caste ultimately enabled her to “have truly lived
instead of vegetated” (1:108).
By the early 1830s, Martineau had become the only paid
contributor to the newly reorganized Monthly Repository, and
she became convinced that “authorship was my legitimate
career” (Autobiography 1:156). With the encouragement of
editor and mentor William Johnson Fox, in 1832 she
launched her Illustrations of Political Economy, a series of
fictionalized illustrations of the theories of Adam Smith that
secured both her literary and financial success.
Martineau published influential works in a variety of
nonfiction genres. (Her only noteworthy novel, Deerbrook, was
23
ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE GENIUS OF SCOTT
(DECEMBER 1832)
Harriet Martineau 
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 23
published in 1839.) Her American travel books, Society in
America (1837) and A Retrospect of Western Travel (1838),
provided a foundation for modern sociological studies, and
her Life in the Sickroom (1844) and Letters on Mesmerism (1845)
did much to build sympathy and support for the sick and
disabled, although the latter book caused a breach in her
family. Martineau also wrote social and political history, most
notably The History of England During the Thirty Years’ Peace,
1816–1846 (1849–50), and translated French philosopher
Auguste Comte’s Positive Philosophy in 1853.
What she regarded as her most important work was begun
in 1852, when she joined the staff of the London Daily News.
Over the next 14 years, Martineau wrote over 1,600 articles
for the newspaper. The Daily News provided her a forum for
discussing the many sociopolitical issues with which she was
deeply engaged, including abolition, improved opportunities
for women and the working classes, and industrial reform.
By her own assessment, Martineau was a popularizer of
great ideas rather than an original thinker, although such an
assessment downplays the cogency and force of her analyses.
Her social and aesthetic criticism display a strong moral
emphasis and surprisingly un-Victorian clarity of expression.
In the following excerpt, taken from a series of articles origi-
nally published in Tait’s Magazine in 1832, and republished
as Miscellanies in 1836, Martineau discusses what she consid-
ers to be Sir Walter Scott’s primary achievement: his use of
fiction to address serious moral and societal questions. Her
essay is not only an analysis of Scott’s work, but a defence of
fiction at a time when the novel was still a suspect genre.
Martineau’s appeal to other writers to apply Scott’s tech-
niques to “the present condition of society” is also an early
recognition of the potential power of realist fiction to effect
social change, and it prepares the way for such novelists as
Dickens, Gaskell, and Eliot. Finally, her essay on Scott also
serves to justify the strategy she was to employ in her
Illustrations of Political Economy: in Martineau’s analysis, fiction
a serious occupation
24
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 24
was the best way to reach the hearts and minds of lettered and
unlettered alike, and thus anyone who wanted to educate—
“the whole living phalanx of clergy, orthodox and dissenting,
of moral philosophers, of all moral teachers”—“must yield
the sceptre of moral sway” to Scott and his imitators.
there is little reason to question that Scott has done more
for the morals of society, taking the expression in its largest sense, than
all the divines, and other express moral teachers, of a century past.
When we consider that all moral sciences are best taught by exempli-
fication, and that these exemplifications produce tenfold effect when
exhibited unprofessionally, it appears that dramatists and novelists of
a high order have usually the advantage, as moralists, over those whose
office it is to present morals in an abstract form. The latter are needed
to systematize the science, and to prevent its being lost sight of as the
highest of the sciences; but the advantage of practical influence rests
with the former. When we, moreover, consider the extent of Scott’s
practical influence, and multiply this extent by its force, there will be
little need of argument to prove that the whole living phalanx of
clergy, orthodox and dissenting, of moral philosophers, of all moral
teachers, except statesmen and authors of a high order, must yield the
sceptre of moral sway to Scott. If they are wise, they will immediately
acknowledge this, estimate his achievements, adopt, to a certain
extent, his methods, and step forward to the vantage ground he has
gained for them. If they be disposed to question the fact of the supe-
riority of his influence, let them measure it for an instant against their
own. Let them look to our universities, and declare whether they have,
within a century, done much for the advancement of morals at home,
or to bring morals into respect abroad. Let them look to the weight of
the established clergy, and say how much they actually modify the
thoughts and guide the conduct of the nation; taking into the account,
as a balance against the good they do, the suspicion there exists against
them in their character of a craft, and the disrepute which attaches
itself to what they teach, through an admixture of abuses. Let them
achievements of the genius of scott
25
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look to the dissenting clergy,—far more influential as they are than
the established,—and say, whether they operate as extensively and
benignantly upon the human heart, as he who makes life itself the
language in which he sets forth the aims and ends of life; who not only
uses a picture-alphabet, that the untutored and the truant may be
allured to learn, but imparts thereto a hieroglyphic character, from
which the most versed in human life may evolve continually a deeper
and yet deeper lore. Let our moral philosophers (usefully employed
though they be in arranging and digesting the science, and enlight-
ened in modifying, from time to time, the manifestations of its eter-
nal principles)—let our moral philosophers declare whether they
expect their digests and expositions to be eagerly listened to by the
hundred thousand families, collected, after their daily avocations,
under the spell of the northern enchanter; whether they would look
for thumbed copies of their writings in workshops and counting-
houses, in the saloons of palaces, and under many a pillow in board-
ing-schools. Our universities may purify morals, and extend their
influence as far as they can; their importance in this case runs a chance
of being overlooked: for Scott is the president of a college where
nations may be numbered for individuals. Our clergy may be and do
all that an established clergy can be and do; yet they will not effect so
much as the mighty lay preacher who has gone out on the highways
of the world, with cheerfulness in his mien and benignity on his brow;
unconscious, perhaps, of the dignity of his office, but as much more
powerful in comparison with a stalled priesthood, as the troubadour
of old,—firing hearts wherever he went with the love of glory,—than
the vowed monk. Our dissenting preachers may obtain a hold on the
hearts of their people, and employ it to good purpose; but they cannot
send their voices east and west to wake up the echoes of the world. Let
all these unite in a missionary scheme, and encompass the globe, and
still Scott will teach morals more effectually than them all. They will
not find audiences at every turn who will take to heart all they say, and
bear it in mind for ever; and if they attempt it now, they will find that
Scott has been before them every where. He has preached truth,
simplicity, benevolence, and retribution, in the spicy bowers of Ceylon,
and in the verandahs of Indian bungalowes, and in the perfumed
a serious occupation
26
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dwellings of Persia, and among groups of settlers at the Cape, and
amidst the pine woods and savannahs of the western world, and in the
vineyards of the Peninsula, and among the ruins of Rome, and the
recesses of the Alps, and the hamlets of France, and the cities of
Germany, and the palaces of Russian despots, and the homes of Polish
patriots. And all this in addition to what has been done in his native
kingdom, where he has exalted the tastes, ameliorated the tempers,
enriched the associations, and exercised the intellects of millions. This
is already done in the short space of eighteen years; a mere span in
comparison with the time that it is to be hoped our language and liter-
ature will last. We may assume the influence of Scott, as we have
described it, to be just beginning its course of a thousand years; and
now, what class of moral teachers (except politicians, who are not too
ready to regard themselves in this light), will venture to bring their
influence into comparison with that of the great lay preacher?
1
•••
To do his next work of beneficence, this great moralist stepped
beyond the Border, and over continents and seas. He implanted or
nourished pure tastes, not only in a thousand homes, but among the
homeless in every land. How many indolent have been roused to
thought and feeling, how many licentious have been charmed into the
temporary love of purity, how many vacant minds have become occu-
pied with objects of interest and affection, it would be impossible to
estimate, unless we could converse with every Briton, from the Factory
Terrace at Canton round the world to the shores of the Pacific, and
with every foreigner on the Continent of Europe whose countenance
lights up at the name of Scott. If one representative only of every class
which has been thus benefited were to repair to his grave, the mourn-
ing train would be of a length that kings might envy. There would be
the lisping child, weeping that there should be no more tales of the
achievements of the genius of scott
27
1
In the following omitted section, Martineau discusses Scott’s “lesser” achievements of
improving Scotland’s image abroad and also positively influencing Scottish morals and
manners.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 27
Sherwood Foresters and the Disinherited Knight; there would be the
school-boy, with his heart full of the heroic deeds of Coeur de Lion in
Palestine; and the girl, glowing with the loyalty of Flora, and sadden-
ing over the griefs of Rebecca;
1
and the artisan who foregoes his pipe
and pot for the adventures of Jeanie Deans;
2
and the clerk and appren-
tice, who refresh their better part from the toils of the counting-house
amidst the wild scenery of Scotland; and soldier and sailor relieved of
the tedium of barracks and cabin by the interest of more stirring
scenes presented to the mind’s eye; and rambling youth chained to
the fireside by the links of a pleasant fiction; and sober manhood made
to grow young again; and sickness beguiled, and age cheered, and
domestic jars forgotten, and domestic sympathies enhanced;—all who
have thus had pure tastes gratified by the creations of his genius,
should join the pilgrim train, which will be passing in spirit by his grave
for centuries to come. Of these, how many have turned from the voice
of the preacher, have cast aside “good books,” have no ear for music,
no taste for drawing, no knowledge of any domestic accomplishment
which might keep them out of harm’s way, but have found that they
have a heart and mind which Scott could touch and awaken! How
many have thus to thank him, not only for the solace of their leisure,
but for the ennobling of their toils!
Another great service rendered is one which could be adminis-
tered only by means of fiction—a service respecting which it matters
not to decide whether it was afforded designedly or unconsciously.
We mean the introduction of the conception of nature, as existing
and following out its own growth in an atmosphere of convention; a
conception of very great importance to the many who, excluded from
the regions of convention, are apt to lose their manhood in its
contemplation. There is little use in assuring people of the middling
ranks, that kings eat beef and mutton, and queens ride on horseback;
they believe, but they do not realize. And this is the case, not only with
the child who pictures a monarch with the crown on his head, on a
a serious occupation
28
1
Characters in Waverley and Ivanhoe.
2
Heroine of The Heart of Midlothian.
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throne, or with the maid-servant who gazes in awe on the Lord
Mayor’s couch; but to a much greater degree than is commonly
supposed, with the father of the child, the master of the maid,—with
him whose interests have to do with kings and courts, and who ought,
therefore, to know what is passing there. It would be impossible to
calculate how much patriotism has lain dormant, through the igno-
rance of the plain citizen, of what is felt and thought in the higher
regions of society, to which his voice of complaint or suggestion ought
to reach, if he had but the courage to lift it up. The ignorance may
be called voluntary: it may be truly said that every one ought to know
that human hearts answer to one another as a reflection in water,
whether this reflection be of a glow-worm on the brink, or of the lofti-
est resplendent star. This is true; but it is not a truth easy in the use;
and its use is all-important. The divine preaches it, as his duty, to
humble courtly pride, and to remind the lowly of their manhood: but
the divine himself realizes the doctrine better while reading
Kenilworth, or The Abbot, than while writing his sermon; and his hear-
ers use this same sermon as a text, of which Nigel and Peveril
1
are the
exposition. Is this a slight service to have rendered?—to have, perhaps
unconsciously, taught human equality, while professing to exhibit
human inequality?—to have displayed, in its full proportion, the
distance which separates man from man, and to have shown that the
very same interests are being transacted at one and the other end of
the line? Walter Scott was exactly the man to render this great serv-
ice; and how well he rendered it, he was little aware. A man, born of
the people, and therefore knowing man, and at the same time a Tory
antiquarian, and therefore knowing courts, he was the fit person to
show the one to the other. At once a benevolent interpreter of the
heart, and a worshipper of royalty, he might be trusted for doing
honor to both parties; though not, we must allow, equal honor. We
cannot award him the praise of perfect impartiality in his interpreta-
tions. We cannot but see a leaning towards regal weaknesses, and a
toleration of courtly vices. We cannot but observe, that the same licen-
achievements of the genius of scott
29
1
Heroes of The Fortunes of Nigel and Peveril of the Peak.
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tiousness which would have been rendered disgusting under equal
temptation in humble life, is made large allowance for when divert-
ing itself within palace walls. Retribution is allowed to befall; but the
vices which this whip is permitted to scourge are still pleasant vices,
instead of vulgar ones. This is not to be wondered at; and perhaps the
purity of the writer’s own imagination may save us from lamenting it;
for he viewed these things, though partially, yet too philosophically,
to allow of any shadow of an imputation of countenancing, or allur-
ing to vice, with whatever wit he may have depicted the intrigues of
Buckingham, or whatever veil of tenderness he may have cast over the
crimes of the unfortunate Mary. His desire was to view these things in
the spirit of charity; and he was less aware than his readers of a
humble rank, that he threw the gloss of romance over his courtly
scenes of every character, and that, if he had drawn the vices of the
lower classes, it would have been without any such advantage.
Meanwhile, we owe him much for having laid open to us the affec-
tions of sovereigns,—the passions of courtiers,—the emotions of the
hearts,—the guidance of the conduct,—the cares and amusements,—
the business and the jests of courts. He has taught many of us how
royalty may be reached and wrought upon; and has therein done
more for the state than perhaps any novelist ever contemplated. That
he did not complete his work by giving to courts accurate represen-
tations of the people, seems a pity; but it could not be helped, since
there is much in the people of which Walter Scott knew nothing. If
this fact is not yet recognised in courts, it soon will be; and to Walter
Scott again it may be owing (as we shall hereafter show) that the true
condition and character of the people will become better known in
aristocratic regions than they are at present.
1
•••
Another important moral service, which belongs almost exclusively
to fiction, is that of satirizing eccentricities and follies, commonly
a serious occupation
30
1
In the following omitted section, Martineau discusses how Scott’s fiction has exposed
religious hypocrisy and superstition and thereby promoted greater religious tolerance.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 30
thought too insignificant to be preached against, and gravely written
about; but which exert an important influence on the happiness of
human life. The oddities of women he has left almost untouched; but
we have a brave assemblage of men who are safe from pulpit censure;
(unless another Henry Warden should rise up to preach against the
sixteen follies of a Roland Graeme under sixteen heads);
1
but who may
be profited by seeing their own picture, or whose picture may prevent
others becoming like them. Is it not wholesome to have a Malagrowther
2
before us on whom to exhaust our impatience, instead of venting it on
the real Malagrowthers of society? Shall we not have fewer and less
extravagant Saddletrees, and Shaftons, and Halcroes, and Yellowleys,
3
for these novels? and will not such bores be regarded with more good
humor? Will not some excellent Jonathan Oldbuck now and then think
of the Antiquary, and check his hobby?—and many a book-worm take a
lesson from Dominie Sampson?
4
Whether such a direct effect be or be
not produced, such exhibitions are as effectual as comedy ought to be
on the stage, and mirthful raillery in real life, in enforcing some of the
obligations, and improving the amenities of society. The rich variety of
Scott’s assemblage of oddities, and the exquisite mirth and good-humor
with which they are shown off, are among the most remarkable partic-
ulars of his achievements. There is not only a strong cast of individual-
ity (as there ought to be) about all his best characters; but his best
characters are none of them representatives of a class. As soon as he
attempted to make his personages such representatives, he failed. His
ostensible heroes, his statesmen and leaders, his magistrates, his adven-
turers, his womankind, whether mistresses or maids, leave little impres-
sion of individuality; while his sovereigns, real heroes, and oddities are
inimitable. The reasons of this failure may be found under our next
head. The result is, that Walter Scott is not only one of the most amiable,
but one of the most effective satirists that ever helped to sweep the path
of life clear of the strewn follies under which many a thorn is hidden.
achievements of the genius of scott
31
1
Characters in The Monastery and The Abbott.
2
Character in The Fortunes of Nigel.
3
Characters in The Heart of Midlothian, The Monastery, and The Pirate.
4
Characters in The Antiquary and Guy Mannering.
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In ascending the scale of social services, for which gratitude is due to
the illustrious departed, we next arrive at one which is so great that we
cannot but mourn that it was not yet greater. There can be no need to
enlarge upon the beauty and excellence of the spirit of kindliness which
breathes through the whole of Scott’s compositions; a spirit which not
only shames the Malagrowthers of society, just spoken of, but charms
the restless to repose, exhilarates the melancholy, rouses the apathetic,
and establishes a good understanding among all who contemplate one
another in these books. It is as impossible for any one to remain cyni-
cal, or moody, or desponding, over these books, as for an infant to look
dismally in the face of a smiling nurse. As face answers to face, so does
heart to heart; and as Walter Scott’s overflowed with love and cheerful-
ness, the hearts of his readers catch its brimmings. If any are shut against
him, they are not of his readers; and we envy them not. They may find
elsewhere all imaginable proofs and illustrations of the goodliness of a
kindly spirit; but why not add to these as perfect an exemplification as
ever was offered? It may be very well to take one abroad in the grey
dawn, and tell him that the hills have a capacity of appearing green, the
waters golden, and the clouds rose-colored, and that larks sometimes
sing soaring in the air, instead of crouching in a grassy nest; but why not
let him remain to witness the effusion of light from behind the moun-
tain, the burst of harmony from field and copse? Why not let him feel,
as well as know, what a morning of sunshine is? Why not let him view its
effects from every accessible point, and pour out his joy in snatches of
song responsive to those which he hears around him, as well as his
thankfulness in a matin hymn? If it be true, as no readers of Scott will
deny, that it exhilarates the spirits, and animates the affections, to follow
the readings of this great Enchanter, it is certain that he has achieved a
great moral work of incitement and amelioration. The test of his merits
here is, that his works are for the innocent and kindly-hearted to enjoy;
and if any others enjoy them, it is by becoming innocent and kindly for
the time, in like manner as it is for the waking flocks and choirs to
welcome the sunrise: if the fox and the owl choose to remain abroad,
the one must abstain from its prey, and the other hush its hootings.
The kindliness of spirit being of so bright a quality, makes us lament
all the more, as we have said, that it had not the other excellence of
a serious occupation
32
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being universally diffused. We know how unreasonable it is to expect
every thing from one man, and are far from saying or believing that
Walter Scott looked otherwise than benignantly on all classes and all
individuals that came under his observation. What we lament is, that
there were extensive classes of men, and they the most important to soci-
ety, that were secluded from the light of his embellishing genius. His
sunshine gilded whatever it fell upon, but it did not fall from a sufficient
height to illuminate the nooks and valleys which he found and left
curtained in mists. What is there of humble life in his narratives? What
did he know of those who live and move in that region? Nothing. There
is not a character from humble life in all his library of volumes; nor had
he any conception that character is to be found there. By humble life
we do not mean Edie Ochiltree’s lot of privileged mendacity, nor Dirk
Hatteraick’s smuggling adventures, nor the Saxon slavery of Gurth, nor
the feudal adherence of Dougal and Caleb Balderstone, and Adam
Woodcock, nor the privileged dependance of Caxon and Fairservice.
1
None of these had any thing to do with humble life: each and all formed
a part of the aristocratic system in which Walter Scott’s affections were
bound up. Jeanie Deans herself, besides being no original conception
of Sir Walter’s, derives none of her character or interest from her station
in life, any farther than as it was the occasion of the peculiarity of her
pilgrimage. We never think of Jeanie as poor, or low in station. Her
simplicity is that which might pertain to a secluded young woman of any
rank; and it is difficult to bear in mind—it is like an extraneous circum-
stance, that her sister was at service, the only attempt made throughout
at realizing the social position of the parties. We do not mention this as
any drawback upon the performance, but merely as saving the only
apparent exception to our remarks, that Sir Walter rendered no service
to humble life in the way of delineating its society. Faithful butlers and
barbers, tricky lady’s maids, eccentric falconers and gamekeepers, are
not those among whom we should look for the strength of character,
the sternness of passion, the practical heroism, the inexhaustible
patience, the unassuming self-denial, the unconscious beneficence—in
achievements of the genius of scott
33
1
Characters in The Antiquary, Guy Mannering, Ivanhoe, The Bride of Lammermoor, The Abbott,
and Rob Roy.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 33
a word, the true-heartedness which is to be found in its perfection in
humble life. Of all this Walter Scott knew nothing. While discriminat-
ing, with the nicest acumen, the shades of character, the modifications
of passion, among those whom he did understand, he was wholly
unaware that he bounded himself within a small circle, beyond which
lay a larger , and a larger; that which he represented being found in each,
in a more distinct outline, in more vivid coloring, and in striking and
various combinations, with other characteristics of humanity which had
never presented themselves to him. He knew not that the strength of
soul, which he represents as growing up in his heroes amidst the strug-
gles of the crusade, is of the same kind with that which is nourished in
our neighbours of the next alley, by conflicts of a less romantic, but not
less heroic cast. He knew not that the passion of ambition, which he has
made to contend with love so fearfully in Leicester’s bosom,
1
is the same
passion, similarly softened and aggravated, with that which consumes
the high-spirited working man, chosen by his associates to represent and
guide their interests, while his heart is torn by opposite appeals to his
domestic affections. He knew not that, however reckless the vice of some
of his courtly personages, greater recklessness is to be found in the pres-
ence of poverty; that the same poverty exposes love to further trials than
he has described, and exercises it into greater refinement; and puts
loyalty more severely to the test, and inspires a nobler intrepidity, and
nourishes a deeper hatred, and a wilder superstition, and a more invet-
erate avarice, and a more disinterested generosity, and a more imper-
turbable fortitude, than even he has set before us. In short, he knew not
that all passions, and all natural movements of society, that he has found
in the higher, exist in the humbler ranks; and all magnified and deep-
ened in proportion as reality prevails over convention, as there is less
mixture of the adventitious with the true. The effect of this partial knowl-
edge is not only the obliteration to himself and to his readers, as far as
connected with him, of more than half the facts and interests of human-
ity, but that his benevolence was stinted in its play. We find no philan-
thropists among his characters; because he had not the means of
a serious occupation
34
1
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (1533–88), courtier and favorite of Elizabeth I. He is
a character in Kenilworth.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 34
forming the conception of philanthropy in its largest sense. He loved
men, all men whom he knew; but that love was not based on knowledge
as extensive as his observation was penetrating; and it did not therefore
deserve the high title of philanthropy. We have no sins of commission
to charge him with, no breaches of charity, not a thought or expression
which is tinged with bitterness against man, collectively or individually;
but we charge him with omission of which he was unconscious, and
which he would, perhaps, scarcely have wished to repair, as it must have
been done at the expense of his Toryism, to which the omission and
unconsciousness were owing. How should a man be a philanthropist
who knows not what freedom is?—not the mere freedom from foreign
domination, but the exemption from misrule at home, the liberty of
watching over and renovating institutions, that the progression of man
and of states may proceed together. Of this kind of freedom Sir Walter
had no conception, and neither, therefore, are there any patriots in his
dramatis personae. There are abundance of soldiers to light up beacons
and fly to arms at the first notice of invasion; many to drink the healths
and fight the battles of their chiefs, to testify their fidelity to their
persons, and peril life and liberty in their cause; plenty to vindicate the
honor of England abroad, and to exult in her glory at home. But this is
not patriotism, any more than kindliness is philanthropy. We have no
long-sighted views respecting the permanent improvement of society,—
no extensive regards to the interests of an entire nation; and, therefore,
no simple self-sacrifice, no steadfastness of devotion to country and
people. The noble class of virtues, which go to make up patriotism, are
not even touched upon by Scott. The sufferings of his heroes are repre-
sented to arise from wounded pride, and from the laceration of
personal, or domestic, or feudal feelings and prepossessions; and in no
single instance from sympathy with the race, or any large body of them.
The courage of his heroes is, in like manner, compounded of instincts
and of conventional stimuli; and in no one case derived from principles
of philanthropy, or of patriotism, which is one direction of philanthropy.
Their fortitude, howsoever steadfast, when arising from self-devotion at
all, arises only from that unreasoning acquiescence in established forms,
which is as inferior to the self-sacrifice of philanthropy, as the implicit
obedience of a child is inferior to the concurrence of the reasoning
achievements of the genius of scott
35
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man. None of Scott’s personages act and suffer as members and servants
of society. Each is for his own; whether it be his family, his chief, his king,
or his country, in a warlike sense. The weal or woe of many, or of all, is
the only consideration which does not occur to them—the only motive
to enterprise and endurance which is not so much as alluded to. There
is no talk of freedom, as respects any thing but brute force,—no suspi-
cion that one class is in a state of privilege, and another in a state of
subjugation, and that these things ought not to be. Gurth, indeed, is
relieved from Saxon bondage, and Adam Woodcock is as imperious and
meddling as he pleases, and the ladies’ maids have abundant liberty to
play pranks; but this sort of freedom has nothing to do with the right of
manhood, and with what ought to be, and will be, the right of woman-
hood—it is the privilege of slavery, won by encroachment, and preserved
by favor. Gurth got rid of his collar, but in our days he would be called
a slave: and Adam Woodcock and Mistress Lilias lived by the breath of
their lady’s nostrils, in the same manner as the courtiers of Coeur de
Lion gained an unusual length of tether from their lord’s knightly cour-
tesy, and those of the second Charles from his careless clemency. There
is no freedom in all this. Slave is written on the knightly crest of the
master, and on the liveried garb of the servitor, as plainly as even on the
branded shoulder of the negro. But it must be so, it is urged, when times
and scenes of slavery are chosen as the groundwork of the fiction.
We answer, Nay; the spirit of freedom may breathe through the
delineation of slavery. However far back we may revert to the usages
of the feudal system, there may be,—there must be, if they exist in the
mind of the author,—aspirations after a state of society more worthy
of humanity. In displaying all the pomp of chivalry, the heart ought
to mourn the woes of inequality it inflicted, while the imagination
revels in its splendors. But this could not be the case with Scott, who
knew about as much of the real condition and character of the
humble classes of each age as the Japanese; perhaps less, as he was a
reader of Basil Hall.
1
Beyond that which seemed to him the outermost
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36
1
Captain Basil Hall (1788–1844), explorer and writer. Most of his books are about the
Far East and North America.
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circle, that of the domestics of the great, all was a blank; save a few
vague outlines of beggar-women with seven small children, and other
such groups that have by some chance found their way into works of
fiction. His benignity, therefore, alloyed by no bitterness of disposi-
tion in himself, was so far restricted by the imperfection of his knowl-
edge of life, as to prevent his conveying the conception of philanthropy
in its largest sense. His services to freedom are of a negative, rather
than a positive character; rendered by showing how things work in a
state of slavery, rather than how they should work in a condition of
rational freedom; and it follows, that his incitements to benevolence
are also tendered unconsciously. Through an exhibition of the soft-
ening and brightening influence of benignity shed over the early
movements of society, he indicates what must be the meridian splen-
dor of philanthropy, penetrating every where, irradiating where it
penetrates, and fertilizing, as well as embellishing whatever it
shines upon.
Much has Walter Scott also done, and done it also unconsciously, for
woman. Neither Mary Wollstonecraft, nor Thompson of Cork,
1
nor any
other advocate of the rights of woman, pleaded so eloquently to the
thoughtful,—and the thoughtful alone will entertain the subject,—as
Walter Scott, by his exhibition of what women are, and by two or three
indications of what they might be. He has been found fault with for the
poverty of character of the women of his tales; a species of blame
against which we have always protested. If he had made as long a list of
oddities among his women as his men, he would have exposed himself
to the reproach of quitting nature, and deserting classes for extrava-
gant individualities; since there is much less scope for eccentricity
among women, in the present state of society, than among men. But,
it is alleged, he has made few of his female characters representatives
of a class. True; for the plain reason, that there are scarcely any classes
to represent. We thank him for the forcible exhibition of this truth: we
thank him for the very term womankind; and can well bear its insulting
use in the mouth of the scoffer, for the sake of the process it may set to
achievements of the genius of scott
37
1
William Thompson (1778–1883), radical Irish thinker.
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work in the mind of the meditative and the just. There is no saying what
the common use of the term canaille may in time be proved to have
effected for the lower orders of men; or in what degree the process of
female emancipation may be hastened by the slang use of the term
womankind, by despots and by fools. It may lead some watchful intel-
lects—some feeling hearts—to ponder the reasons of the fact, that the
word mankind calls up associations of grandeur and variety,—that of
womankind, ideas of littleness and sameness,—that the one brings after
it conceptions of lofty destiny, heroic action, grave counsel, a busy office
in society, a dignified repose from cares, a steadfast pursuit of wisdom,
an intrepid achievement of good;—while the other originates the very
opposite conceptions,—vegetation instead of life, folly instead of coun-
sel, frivolity instead of action, restlessness in the palace of industry,
apathy in that of repose, listless accomplishment of small aims, a passive
reception of what others may please to impart; or, at the very best, a
halting, intermitting pursuit of dimly-discerned objects. To some it may
be suggested to inquire, Why this contrast should exist?—why one-half
of the rational creation should be so very much less rational?—and, as
a consequence, so much less good, and so much less happy than the
other? If they are for a moment led by custom to doubt whether,
because they are less rational, they are less happy and less good, the
slightest recurrence to Scott’s novels is enough to satisfy them, that the
common notion of the sufficiency of present female objects to female
progression and happiness is unfounded. They will perhaps look
abroad from Scott into all other works of fiction—into all faithful
pictures of life—and see what women are; and they will finally perceive,
that the fewer women there are found to plead the cause of their sex,
the larger mixture of folly there is in their pleadings; the more exten-
sive their own unconsciousness of their wrongs, the stronger is their
case. The best argument for Negro Emancipation lies in the vices and
subservience of slaves: the best argument for female emancipation lies
in the folly and contentedness of women under the present system,—
an argument to which Walter Scott has done the fullest justice; for a set
of more passionless, frivolous, uninteresting beings was never assem-
bled at morning auction, or evening tea-table, than he has presented
us with in his novels. The few exceptions are made so by the strong
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38
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workings of instinct, or of superstition (the offspring of strong instinct
and weak reason combined); save in the two or three instances where
the female mind had been exposed to manly discipline. Scott’s female
characters are easily arranged under these divisions:—Three-fourths
are womankind merely: pretty, insignificant ladies, with their pert wait-
ing maids. A few are viragoes, in whom instinct is strong, whose souls
are to migrate hereafter into the she-eagle or bear,—Helen M’Gregor,
Ulrica, Magdalen Graeme, and the Highland Mother.
1
A few are super-
stitious,—Elspeth, Alice, Norna, Mother Nicneven. A few exhibit the
same tendencies, modified by some one passion; as Lady Ashton, Lady
Derby, and Lady Douglas.
2
Mary and Elizabeth are womankind modi-
fied by royalty. There only remain Flora M’Ivor, Die Vernon, Rebecca,
and Jeanie Deans.
3
For these four, and their glorious significance,
womankind are as much obliged to Walter Scott as for the insignifi-
cance of all the rest; not because they are what women might be, and
therefore ought to be; but because they afford indications of this, and
that these indications are owing to their having escaped from the
management of man, and been trained by the discipline of circum-
stance. If common methods yield no such women as these; if such
women occasionally come forth from the school of experience, what
an argument is this against the common methods,—what a plea for a
change of system! Woman cannot be too grateful to him who has
furnished it. Henceforth, when men fire at the name of Flora M’Ivor,
let women say, “There will be more Floras when women feel that they
have political power and duties.” When men worship the image of Die
Vernon, let them be reminded, that there will be other Die Vernons
when women are impelled to self-reliance. When Jeanie is spoken of
with tender esteem, let it be suggested, that strength of motive makes
heroism of action; and that as long as motive is confined and weakened,
the very activity which should accomplish high aims must degenerate
into puerile restlessness. When Rebecca is sighed for, as a lofty presence
that has passed away, it should be asked, how she should possibly
achievements of the genius of scott
39
1
Characters in Ivanhoe, The Abbott, and The Chronicles of the Canongate.
2
Characters in The Bride of Lammermoor, Peveril of the Peak, and Castle Dangerous.
3
Characters in Waverley, Rob Roy, Ivanhoe, and The Heart of Midlothian.
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remain or re-appear in a society which alike denies the discipline by
which her high powers and sensibilities might be matured, and the
objects on which they might be worthily employed? As a woman, no less
than as a Jewess, she is the representative of the wrongs of a degraded
and despised class: there is no abiding-place for her among foes to her
caste; she wanders unemployed (as regards her peculiar capabilities)
through the world; and when she dies, there has been, not only a deep
injury inflicted, but a waste made of the resources of human greatness
and happiness. Yes, women may choose Rebecca as the representative
of their capabilities: first, despised, then wondered at, and involuntar-
ily admired; tempted, made use of, then persecuted, and finally
banished—not by a formal decree, but by being refused honorable
occupation, and a safe abiding place. Let women not only take her for
their model, but make her speak for them to society, till they have
obtained the educational discipline which beseems them; the rights,
political and social, which are their due; and that equal regard with the
other sex in the eye of man, which it requires the faith of Rebecca to
assure them they have in the eye of Heaven. Meantime, while still suffer-
ing under injustice, let them lay to heart, for strength and consolation,
the beautiful commentary which Walter Scott has given on the lot of
the representative of their wrongs. If duly treasured, it may prove by its
effects, that our author has contributed, in more ways than one, to
female emancipation; by supplying a principle of renovation to the
enslaved, as well as by exposing their condition; by pointing out the
ends for which freedom and power are desirable, as well as the disas-
trous effects of withholding them.
1
•••
These, then, are the moral services,—many and great,—which
Scott has rendered,—positively and negatively,—consciously and
unconsciously, to society. He has softened national prejudices; he has
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40
1
Martineau here quotes a long passage from Scott on Ivanhoe, in which he argues that
allowing Rebecca to marry Ivanhoe would teach a false lesson, that virtue and self-denial
are rewarded.
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encouraged innocent tastes in every region of the world; he has
imparted to certain influential classes the conviction that human
nature works alike in all; he has exposed priestcraft and fanaticism;
he has effectively satirized eccentricities, unamiableness, and follies;
he has irresistibly recommended benignity in the survey of life, and
indicated the glory of a higher kind of benevolence; and finally, he
has advocated the rights of woman with a force all the greater for his
being unaware of the import and tendency of what he was saying. The
one other achievement which we attribute to him, is also not the less
magnificent for being overlooked by himself.
By achieving so much within narrow bounds, he has taught how more
may be achieved in a wider space. He has taught us the power of fiction
as an agent of morals and philosophy; “and it shall go hard with us but
we will better the instruction.” Every agent of these master spirits is
wanted in an age like this; and he who has placed a new one at their serv-
ice, is a benefactor of society. Scott might have written, as he declared
he wrote, for the passing of his time, the improvement of his fortunes,
and the amusement of his readers: he might have believed, as he
declared he believed, that little moral utility arises out of works of fiction:
we are not bound to estimate his works as lightly as he did, or to agree
in his opinions of their influences. We rather learn from him how much
may be impressed by exemplification which would be rejected in the
form of reasoning, and how there may be more extensive embodiments
of truth in fiction than the world was before thoroughly aware of. It
matters not that the truth he exemplified was taken up at random, like
that of all his predecessors in the walks of fiction. Others may system-
atize, having learned from him how extensively they may embody. There
is a boundless field open before them; no less than the whole region of
moral science, politics, political economy, social rights and duties. All
these, and more, are as fit for the process of exemplification as the vari-
eties of life and character illustrated by Scott. And not only has he left
the great mass of material unwrought, but, with all his richness of vari-
ety, has made but scanty use of the best instruments of illustration. The
grandest manifestations of passion remain to be displayed; the finest
elements of the poetry of human emotion are yet uncombined; the most
various dramatic exhibition of events and characters is yet unwrought,
achievements of the genius of scott
41
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for there has yet been no recorder of the poor; at least, none but those
who write as mere observers; who describe, but do not dramatize
humble life. The widest interests being thus still untouched, the richest
materials unemployed, what may not prove the ultimate obligations of
society to him who did so much, and pointed the way towards doing infi-
nitely more; and whose vast achievements are, above all, valuable as indi-
cations of what remains to be achieved? That this, his strongest claim to
gratitude, has not yet been fully recognised, is evident from the fact, that
though he has had many imitators, there have been yet none to take
suggestion from him; to employ his method of procedure upon new
doctrine and other materials. There have been many found to construct
fiction within his range of morals, character, incident, and scenery; but
none to carry the process out of his range. We have yet to look for this
legitimate offspring of the productions of Scott, though wearied with
the intrusions of their spurious brethren.
The progression of the age requires something better than this imita-
tion;—requires that the above-mentioned suggestion should be used.
If an author of equal genius with Scott were to arise to-morrow, he
would not meet with an equal reception; not only because novelty is
worn off, but because the serious temper of the times requires a new
direction of the genius of the age. Under the pressure of difficulty, in
the prospect of extensive change, armed with expectations or filled with
determination as the general mind now is, it has not leisure or dispo-
sition to receive even its amusement unmixed with what is solid and has
a bearing upon its engrossing interests. There may still be the thought-
less and indolent, to whom mere fiction is necessary as a pastime; but
these are not they who can guarantee an author’s influence, or secure
his popularity. The bulk of the reading public, whether or not on the
scent of utility, cannot be interested without a larger share of philoso-
phy, or a graver purpose in fiction, than formerly; and the writer who
would effect most for himself and others in this department must take
his heroes and heroines from a different class than any which has yet
been adequately represented. This difference of character implies,
under the hands of a good artist, a difference of scenery and incident;
for the incidents of a fiction are worth nothing, unless they arise out of
the characters; and the scenery, both natural and moral, has no charm
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42
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unless it be harmonious with both. Instead of tales of knightly love and
glory, of chivalrous loyalty, of the ambition of ancient courts, and the
bygone superstitions of a half-savage state, we must have, in a new novel-
ist, the graver themes—not the less picturesque, perhaps, for their real-
ity—which the present condition of society suggests. We have had
enough of ambitious intrigues; why not now take the magnificent
subject, the birth of political principle, whose advent has been heralded
so long? What can afford finer moral scenery than the transition state
in which society now is! Where are nobler heroes to be found than
those who sustain society in the struggle; and what catastrophe so grand
as the downfall of bad institutions, and the issues of a process of reno-
vation? Heroism may now be found, not cased in helm and cuirass, but
strengthening itself in the cabinet of the statesman, guiding the move-
ments of the unarmed multitude, and patiently bearing up against
hardship, in the hope of its peaceful removal. Love may now be truly
represented as sanctified by generosity and self-denial in many of the
sad majority of cases where its course runs not smooth. All the virtues
which have graced fictitious delineations, are still at the service of the
novelist; but their exercise and discipline should be represented as
different from what they were. The same passions still sway human
hearts; but they must be shown to be intensified or redressed by the
new impulses which a new state of things affords. Fiction must not be
allowed to expire with Scott, or to retain only that languid existence
which is manifest merely in imitations of his works: we must hope,—
not, alas! for powers and copiousness like his,—but for an enlightened
application of his means of achievement to new aims: the higher qual-
ity of which may in some measure compensate for the inferiority of
power and richness which it is only reasonable to anticipate.
It appears, then, from the inquiry we have pursued, that the services
for which society has to be eternally grateful to Walter Scott are of three
distinct kinds. He has vindicated the character of genius by the health-
iness of his own. He has achieved marvels in the province of art, and
stupendous benefits in that of morals. He has indicated, by his own
achievements, the way to larger and higher achievements.—What a lot
for a man,—to be thus a threefold benefactor to his race! to unite in
himself the functions of moralist, constructor, and discoverer! What a
achievements of the genius of scott
43
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possession for society to have had! and to retain for purposes of amelio-
ration, incitement, and guidance! He can never be lost to us, whatever
rival or kindred spirit may be destined to arise, or whether he is to be
the last of his class. If the latter supposition should prove true,—which,
however, appears to us impossible,—he will stand a fadeless apparition
on the structure of his own achievements, distanced, but not impaired,
by time: if the former, his spirit will migrate into his successors, and
communicate once more with us through them. In either case, we shall
have him with us still.
But, it will be said, the services here attributed to Scott were, for the
most part, rendered unconsciously. True; and why should not the
common methods of Providence have place here as in all other
instances? Scott did voluntarily all that he could; and that he was
destined to do yet more involuntarily, is so much the greater honor,
instead of derogating, from his merit. That some of this extra service
was of a nature which he might have declined if offered a choice, is only
an additional proof that the designs of men are over-ruled, and their
weakness not only compensated for by divine direction, but made its
instruments. Great things are done by spontaneous human action: yet
greater things are done by every man without his concurrence or suspi-
cion; all which tends, not to degrade the character of human effort, but
to exemplify the purposes of Providence. Scott is no new instance of
this, nor deserves less honor in proportion to his spontaneous efforts
than the sages of Greece, or the historians of Rome, and the benefac-
tors of every age, who have been destined to effect more as illustrators
than even as teachers and recorders. He was happy and humbly
complacent in his creative office; it is so much pure blessing that we
can regard him with additional and higher complacency as a vindica-
tor of genius, and an unconscious prophet of its future achievements.
SOURCE 
Tait’s 2 (December 1832); reprinted in Miscellanies (London, 1836).
SELECTED SECONDARY READING
Hunter, Shelagh. Harriet Martineau: The Poetics of Moralism. Aldershot:
Scolar Press, 1995.
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Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 44
Martineau, Harriet. Autobiography, with Memorials by Maria Weston
Chapman. 3 vols. Boston: Osgood, 1877.
Peterson, Linda H. “Harriet Martineau: Masculine Discourse, Female
Sage.” Victorian Sages and Cultural Discourse: Renegotiating Gender
and Power. Ed. Thaïs E. Morgan. New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press, 1990.
Pichanick, Valerie Kossew. Harriet Martineau: The Woman and Her Work.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980.
Webb, R.K. Harriet Martineau: A Radical Victorian. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1960.
achievements of the genius of scott
45
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elizabeth rigby (1809–93) was born in Norwich, the
daughter of a physician and his second wife. She studied art,
literature, and languages at home and in Germany, and early
evinced a talent for drawing. In 1836 she published her first
review, an attack on Goethe, in the Foreign Quarterly Review,
and in 1841 she published her first book, A Residence on the
Shores of the Baltic, based on a series of letters she had written
while visiting a sister in Russia. Her book was admired by J.G.
Lockhart, editor of the conservative Quarterly Review, and she
soon became the first—and for a long time, only—woman to
write regularly for the prestigious review.
In 1849 she married Sir Charles Eastlake, a well-known
painter and later director of the National Gallery. Both as
individuals and as collaborators, the Eastlakes travelled
extensively and published widely in art history and criticism.
Eastlake’s individual reputation was such that, after Anna
Jameson’s death in 1860, she was asked to complete the
final volume of Jameson’s History of Our Lord as Exemplified
in Works of Art. Following her husband’s death in 1865,
Eastlake continued to write and publish both aesthetic crit-
icism and cultural studies. In 1883 she published a collec-
tion of essays on Five Great Painters, in part because of her
dislike of the D.G. Rossetti exhibit then running in London.
After her death, her nephew issued her Journals and
Correspondence (1895).
46
REVIEW OF VANITY FAIR AND JANE EYRE
(DECEMBER 1848)
Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake 
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In literary criticism, Eastlake’s best-known (perhaps infa-
mous) work is her review of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, which is excerpted here. While
Eastlake takes exception to aspects of both novels, Jane Eyre is
singled out for particular attack, primarily because of the hero-
ine’s rebellious nature. While Vanity Fair’s Becky Sharp is
presented as a kind of diabolic satire, Jane Eyre is presented as
all too human, and her resentment of her position in life contra-
dicts conservative Christian notions of humility. Like other
conservative critics of the time, Eastlake sees in Jane Eyre a chal-
lenge not only to traditional notions of fiction and fictional
representations of women, but also to the whole organization
of society: in her estimation, the novel evinces that “tone of the
mind and thought which has overthrown authority and violated
every code human and divine abroad, and fostered Chartism
and rebellion at home.” While Jane is a powerful and
compelling character , she is nevertheless “one whom we should
not care for as an acquaintance, whom we should not seek as a
friend, whom we should not desire for a relation, and whom we
should scrupulously avoid as a governess.”
a remarkable novel is a great event for English society. It is
a kind of common friend, about whom people can speak the truth
without fear of being compromised, and confess their emotions with-
out being ashamed. We are a particularly shy and reserved people,
and set about nothing so awkwardly as the simple art of getting really
acquainted with each other. We meet over and over again in what is
conventionally called “easy society,” with the tacit understanding to
go so far and no farther; to be as polite as we ought to be, and as intel-
lectual as we can; but mutually and honourably to forbear lifting those
veils which each spreads over his inner sentiments and sympathies.
For this purpose a host of devices have been contrived by which all
the forms of friendship may be gone through, without committing
ourselves to one spark of the spirit. We fly with eagerness to some
review of VANITY FAIR and JANE EYRE
47
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common ground in which each can take the liveliest interest, without
taking the slightest in the world in his companion. Our various fash-
ionable manias, for charity one season, for science the next, are only
so many clever contrivances for keeping our neighbour at arm’s
length. We can attend committees, and canvas for subscribers, and
archaeologise, and geologise, and take ether with our fellow
Christians for a twelvemonth, as we might sit cross-legged and smoke
the pipe of fraternity with a Turk for the same period—and know at
the end of the time as little of the real feelings of the one as we should
about the domestic relations of the other. But there are ways and
means for lifting the veil which equally favour our national idiosyn-
crasy; and a new and remarkable novel is one of them—especially the
nearer it comes to real life. We invite our neighbour to a walk with
the deliberate and malicious object of getting thoroughly acquainted
with him. We ask no impertinent questions—we proffer no indiscreet
confidences—we do not even sound him, ever so delicately, as to his
opinion of a common friend, for he would be sure not to say, lest we
should go and tell; but we simply discuss Becky Sharp, or Jane Eyre,
and our object is answered at once.
There is something about these two new and noticeable characters
which especially compels everybody to speak out. They are not to be
dismissed with a few commonplace moralities and sentimentalities.
They do not fit any ready-made criticism. They give the most stupid
something to think of, and the most reserved something to say; the
most charitable too are betrayed into home comparisons which they
usually condemn, and the most ingenious stumble into paradoxes
which they can hardly defend. Becky and Jane also stand well side by
side both in their analogies and their contrasts. Both the ladies are
governesses, and both make the same move in society; the one, in Jane
Eyre phraseology, marrying her “master,” and the other her master’s
son. Neither starts in life with more than a moderate capital of good
looks—Jane Eyre with hardly that—for it is the fashion now-a-days with
novelists to give no encouragement to the insolence of mere beauty,
but rather to prove to all whom it may concern how little a sensible
woman requires to get on with in the world. Both have also an elfish
kind of nature, with which they divine the secrets of other hearts, and
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conceal those of their own; and both rejoice in that peculiarity of
feature which Mademoiselle de Luzy has not contributed to render
popular, viz., green eyes. Beyond this, however, there is no similarity
either in the minds, manners, or fortunes of the two heroines. They
think and act upon diametrically opposite principles—at least so the
author of Jane Eyre intends us to believe—and each, were they to meet,
which we should of all things enjoy to see them do, would cordially
despise and abominate the other. Which of the two, however, would
most successfully dupe the other is a different question, and one not
so easy to decide; though we have our own ideas upon the subject.
We must discuss Vanity Fair first, which, much as we were entitled to
expect from its author’s pen, has fairly taken us by surprise. We were
perfectly aware that Mr. Thackeray had of old assumed the jester’s
habit, in order the more unrestrainedly to indulge the privilege of
speaking the truth;—we had traced his clever progress through Fraser’s
Magazine and the ever-improving pages of Punch—which wonder of
the time has been infinitely obliged to him—but still we were little
prepared for the keen observation, the deep wisdom, and the consum-
mate art which he has interwoven in the slight texture and whimsical
pattern of Vanity Fair. Everybody, it is to be supposed, has read the
volume by this time; and even for those who have not, it is not neces-
sary to describe the order of the story. It is not a novel, in the common
acceptation of the word, with a plot purposely contrived to bring about
certain scenes, and develop certain characters, but simply a history of
those average sufferings, pleasures, penalties, and rewards to which
various classes of mankind gravitate as naturally and certainly in this
world as the sparks fly upward. It is only the same game of life which
every player sooner or later makes for himself—were he to have a
hundred chances, and shuffle the cards of circumstance every time. It
is only the same busy, involved drama which may be seen at any time
by any one, who is not engrossed with the magnified minutiae of his
own petty part, but with composed curiosity looks on to the stage
where his fellow men and women are the actors; and that not even
heightened by the conventional colouring which Madame de Staël
1
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49
1
Germaine de Staël (1766–1816), French-Swiss essayist and novelist.
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philosophically declares that fiction always wants in order to make up
for its not being truth. Indeed, so far from taking any advantage of this
novelist’s licence, Mr. Thackeray has hardly availed himself of the natu-
ral average of remarkable events that really do occur in this life. The
battle of Waterloo, it is true, is introduced; but, as far as regards the
story, it brings about only one death and one bankruptcy, which might
either of them have happened in a hundred other ways. Otherwise the
tale runs on, with little exception, in that humdrum course of daily
monotony, out of which some people coin materials to act, and others
excuses to doze, just as their dispositions may be.
It is this reality which is at once the charm and the misery here.
With all these unpretending materials it is one of the most amusing,
but also one of the most distressing books we have read for many a
long year. We almost long for a little exaggeration and improbability
to relieve us of that sense of dead truthfulness which weighs down our
hearts, not for the Amelias and Georges of the story, but for poor
kindred human nature. In one light this truthfulness is even an objec-
tion. With few exceptions the personages are too like our every-day
selves and neighbours to draw any distinct moral from. We cannot see
our way clearly. Palliations of the bad and disappointments in the
good are perpetually obstructing our judgment, by bringing what
should decide it too close to that common standard of experience in
which our only rule of opinion is charity. For it is only in fictitious
characters which are highly coloured for one definite object, or in
notorious personages viewed from a distance, that the course of the
true moral can be seen to run straight—once bring the individual
with his life and circumstances closely before you, and it is lost to the
mental eye in the thousand pleas and witnesses, unseen and unheard
before, which rise up to overshadow it. And what are all these person-
ages in Vanity Fair but feigned names for our own beloved friends and
acquaintances, seen under such a puzzling cross-light of good in evil
and evil in good, of sins and sinnings against, of little to be praised
virtues, and much to be excused vices, that we cannot presume to
moralise upon them—not even to judge them,—content to exclaim
sorrowfully with the old prophet, “Alas! my brother!” Every actor on
the crowded stage of Vanity Fair represents some type of that perverse
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mixture of humanity in which there is ever something not wholly to
approve or to condemn. There is the desperate devotion of a fond
heart to a false object, which we cannot respect; there is the vain, weak
man, half good and half bad, who is more despicable in our eyes than
the decided villain. There are the irretrievably wretched education,
and the unquenchably manly instincts, both contending in the
confirmed roué, which melt us to the tenderest pity. There is the self-
ishness and self-will which the possessor of great wealth and fawning
relations can hardly avoid. There is the vanity and fear of the world,
which assist mysteriously with pious principles in keeping a man
respectable; there are combinations of this kind of every imaginable
human form and colour, redeemed but feebly by the steady excel-
lence of an awkward man, and the genuine heart of a vulgar woman,
till we feel inclined to tax Mr. Thackeray with an under estimate of
our nature, forgetting that Madame de Staël is right after all, and that
without a little conventional rouge no human complexion can stand
the stage-lights of fiction.
But if these performers give us pain, we are not ashamed to own,
as we are speaking openly, that the chief actress herself gives us none
at all. For there is of course a principal pilgrim in Vanity Fair, as much
in its emblematical original, Bunyan’s Progress;
1
only unfortunately
this one is travelling the wrong way. And we say “unfortunately”
merely by way of courtesy, for in reality we care little about the matter.
No, Becky—our hearts neither bleed for you, nor cry out against you.
You are wonderfully clever, and amusing, and accomplished, and
intelligent, and the Soho ateliers were not the best nurseries for a
moral training; and you were married early in life to a regular black-
leg, and you have had to live upon your wits ever since, which is not
an improving sort of maintenance; and there is much to be said for
and against; but still you are not one of us, and there is an end to our
sympathies and censures. People who allow their feelings to be lacer-
ated by such a character and career as yours, are doing both you and
themselves great injustice. No author could have openly introduced
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1
Vanity Fair is a location in John Bunyan’s (1628–88) allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress
(1678).
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a near connexion of Satan’s into the best London society, nor would
the moral end intended have been answered by it; but really and
honestly, considering Becky in her human character, we know of none
which so thoroughly satisfies our highest beau ideal of feminine
wickedness, with so slight a shock to our feelings and proprieties. It
is very dreadful, doubtless, that Becky neither loved the husband who
loved her, nor the child of her own flesh and blood, nor indeed any
body but herself; but, as far as she is concerned we cannot pretend to
be scandalized—for how could she without a heart? It is very shock-
ing of course that she committed all sorts of dirty tricks, and jockeyed
her neighbours, and never cared what she trampled under foot if it
happened to obstruct her step; but how could she be expected to do
otherwise without a conscience? The poor little woman was most
tryingly placed; she came into the world without the customary letters
of credit upon those two great bankers of humanity, “Heart and
Conscience,” and it was no fault of hers if they dishonoured all her
bills. All she could do in this dilemma was to establish the firmest
connexion with the inferior commercial branches of “Sense and
Tact,” who secretly do much business in the name of the head
concern, and with whom her “fine frontal development” gave her
unlimited credit. She saw that selfishness was the metal which the
stamp of heart was suborned to pass; that hypocrisy was the homage
that vice rendered to virtue; that honesty was, at all events, acted,
because it was the best policy; and so she practiced the arts of self-
ishness and hypocrisy like anybody else in Vanity Fair, only with this
difference, that she brought them to their highest possible pitch of
perfection. For why is it that, looking round in this world, we find
plenty of characters to compare with her up to a certain pitch, but
none which reach her actual standard? Why is it that, speaking of this
friend or that, we say in the tender mercies of our hearts, “No, she is
not quite so bad as Becky?” We fear not only because she has more
heart and conscience, but also because she has less cleverness.
No; let us give Becky her due. There is enough in this world of ours,
as we all know, to provoke a saint, far more a poor little devil like her.
She had none of those fellow-feelings which make us wondrous kind.
She saw people around her cowards in vice, and simpletons in virtue,
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and she had no patience with either, for she was as little the one as the
other herself. She saw women who loved their husbands and yet teazed
them, and ruining their children although they doated upon them, and
she sneered at their utter inconsistency. Wickedness or goodness, unless
coupled with strength, were alike worthless to her. That weakness which
is the blessed pledge of our humanity was to her only the despicable
badge of our imperfection. She thought, it might be, of her master’s
words, “Fallen cherub! to be weak is to be miserable!” and wondered
how we could be such fools as first to sin and then to be sorry. Becky’s
light was defective, but she acted up to it. Her goodness goes as far as
good temper, and her principles as far as shrewd sense, and we may
thank her consistency for showing us what they are both worth.
It is another thing to pretend to settle whether such a character be
primâ facie impossible, though devotion to the better sex might well
demand the assertion. There are mysteries of iniquity, under the
semblance of man and woman, read of in history, or met with in the
unchronicled sufferings of private life, which would almost make us
believe that the powers of Darkness occasionally made use of this
earth for a Foundling Hospital, and sent their imps to us, already
provided with a return-ticket. We shall not decide on the lawfulness
or otherwise of any attempt to depict such importations; we can only
rest perfectly satisfied that, granting the author’s premises, it is impos-
sible to imagine them carried out with more felicitous skill and more
exquisite consistency than in the heroine of Vanity Fair. At all events,
the infernal regions have no reason to be ashamed of little Becky,nor
the ladies either: she has, at least, all the cleverness of the sex.
The great charm, therefore, and comfort of Becky is, that we may
study her without any compunctions. The misery of this life is not the
evil that we see, but the good and the evil which are so inextricably
twisted together. It is that perpetual memento ever meeting one—
How in this vile world below
Noblest things find vilest using,
1
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53
1
Lines from “Palm Sunday” in John Keble’s (1792–1866) 1827 book of devotional verse,
The Christian Year.
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that is so very distressing to those who have hearts as well as eyes. But
Becky relieves them of all this pain—at least in her own person. Pity
would be thrown away upon one who has not heart enough for it to
ache even for herself. Becky is perfectly happy, as all must be who
excel in what they love best. Her life is one exertion of successful
power. Shame never visits her, for “’Tis conscience that makes cowards
of us all”—and she has none. She realizes that ne plus ultra
1
of sublu-
nary comfort which it was reserved for a Frenchman to define—the
blessed combination of “le bon estomac et le mauvais coeur”:
2
for Becky
adds to her other good qualities that of an excellent digestion.
Upon the whole, we are not afraid to own that we rather enjoy her
ignis fatuus course, dragging the weak and the vain and the selfish,
through mud and mire, after her, and acting all parts, from the
modest rushlight to the gracious star, just as it suits her. Clever little
imp that she is! What exquisite tact she shows!—what unflagging
good humour!—what ready self-possession! Becky never disappoints
us; she never even makes us tremble. We know that her answer will
come exactly suiting her one particular object, and frequently three
or four more in prospect. What respect, too, she has for those decen-
cies which more virtuous, but more stupid humanity, often disdains!
What detection of all that is false and mean! What instinct for all that
is true and great! She is her master’s true pupil in that: she knows
what is really divine as well as he, and bows before it. She honours
Dobbin in spite of his big feet: she respects her husband more than
ever she did before, perhaps for the first time, at the very moment
when he is stripping not only her jewels, but name, honour, and
comfort off her.
We are not so sure either whether we are justified in calling her “le
mauvais coeur.” Becky does not pursue any one vindictively; she never
does gratuitous mischief. The fountain is more dry than poisoned.
She is even generous—when she can afford it. Witness that burst of
plain speaking in Dobbin’s favour to the little dolt Amelia, for which
we forgive her many a sin. ’Tis true she wanted to get rid of her; but
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1
Height, pinnacle.
2
Good stomach (digestion) and bad heart.
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let that pass. Becky was a thrifty dame, and liked to despatch two birds
with one stone. And she was honest, too, after a fashion. The part of
wife she acts at first as well, and better than most; but as for that of
mother, there she fails from the beginning. She knew that maternal
love was no business of hers—that a fine frontal development could
give her no help there—and puts so little spirit into her imitation that
no one could be taken in for a moment. She felt that that bill, of all
others, would be sure to be dishonoured, and it went against her
conscience—we mean her sense—to send it in.
In short, the only respect in which Becky’s course gives us pain is
when it locks itself into that of another, and more genuine child of
this earth. No one can regret those being entangled in her nets whose
vanity and meanness of spirit alone led them into its meshes—such
are rightly served: but we do grudge her that real sacred thing called
love, even of a Rawdon Crawley, who has more of that self-forgetting,
all-purifying feeling for his little evil spirit than many a better man has
for a good woman. We do grudge Becky a heart, though it belong only
to a swindler. Poor, sinned against, vile, degraded, but still true-
hearted Rawdon!—you stand next in our affections and sympathies
to honest Dobbin himself. It was the instinct of a good nature which
made the Major feel that the stamp of the Evil One was upon Becky;
and it was the stupidity of a good nature which made the Colonel
never suspect it. He was a cheat, a black-leg, an unprincipled dog; but
still “Rawdon is a man, and be hanged to him,” as the Rector says. We
follow him through the illustrations, which are, in many instances, a
delightful enhancement to the text—as he stands there, with his
gentle eyelid, coarse moustache, and foolish chin, bringing up
Becky’s coffee-cup with a kind of dumb fidelity; or looking down at
little Rawdon with a more than paternal tenderness. All Amelia’s
philoprogenitive idolatries do not touch us like one fond instinct of
“stupid Rawdon.”
Dobbin sheds a halo over all the long-necked, loose-jointed,
Scotch-looking gentlemen of our acquaintance. Flat feet and flap ears
seem henceforth incompatible with evil. He reminds us of one of the
sweetest creations that have appeared from any modern pen—that
plain, awkward, loveable “Long Walter,” in Lady Georgina Fullerton’s
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beautiful novel of Grantley Manor.
1
Like him, too, in his proper self-
respect; for Dobbin—lumbering, heavy, shy, and absurdly over-modest
as the ugly fellow is—is yet true to himself. At one time he seems to
be sinking into the mere abject dangler after Amelia; but he breaks
his chains like a man, and resumes them again like a man, too,
although half disenchanted of his amiable delusion.
But to return for a moment to Becky. The only criticism we would
offer is one which the author has almost disarmed by making her
mother a Frenchwoman. The construction of this little clever monster
is diabolically French. Such a lusus naturae
2
as a woman without a
heart and conscience would, in England, be a mere brutal savage, and
poison half a village. France is the land for the real Syren, with the
woman’s face and the dragon’s claws. The genus of Pigeon and
Laffarge
3
claims her for its own—only that our heroine takes a far
higher class by not requiring the vulgar matter of fact of crime to
develop her full powers. It is an affront to Becky’s tactics to believe
that she could ever be reduced to so low a resource, or, that if she
were, anybody would find it out. We, therefore, cannot sufficiently
applaud the extreme discretion with which Mr. Thackeray has hinted
at the possibly assistant circumstances of Joseph Sedley’s dissolution.
A less delicacy of handling would have marred the harmony of the
whole design. Such a casualty as that suggested to our imagination
was not intended for the light net of Vanity Fair to draw on shore; it
would have torn it to pieces. Besides it is not wanted. Poor little Becky
is bad enough to satisfy the most ardent student of “good books.”
Wickedness, beyond a certain pitch, gives no increase of gratification
even to the sternest moralist; and one of Mr. Thackeray’s excellences
is the sparing quantity he consumes. The whole use, too, of the work—
that of generously measuring one another by this standard—is lost,
the moment you convict Becky of a capital crime. Who can, with any
face, liken a dear friend to a murderess? Whereas now there are no
little symptoms of fascinating ruthlessness, graceful ingratitude, or
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56
1
Novel published in 1847 by Lady Georgina Fullerton (1812–85).
2
Freak of nature.
3
Notorious French women. Marie Cappelle Laffarge was accused of poisoning her
husband and became the subject of an 1840 play.
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ladylike selfishness, observable among our charming acquaintance,
that we may not immediately detect to an inch, and more effectually
intimidate by the simple application of the Becky gauge than by the
most vehement use of all ten commandments. Thanks to Mr.
Thackeray, the world is now provided with an idea, which, if we
mistake not, will be the skeleton in the corner of every ball-room and
boudoir, for a long time to come. Let us leave it intact in its unique
point and freshness—a Becky, and nothing more. We should, there-
fore, advise our readers to cut out that picture of our heroine’s
“Second Appearance as Clytemnestra,”
1
which casts so uncomfortable
a glare over the latter part of the volume, and, disregarding all hints
and inuendoes, simply to let the changes and chances of this mortal
life have due weight in their minds. Jos had been much in India. His
was a bad life; he ate and drank most imprudently, and his digestion
was not to be compared with Becky’s. No respectable office would
have ensured “Waterloo Sedley.”
Vanity Fair is pre-eminently a novel of the day—not in the vulgar
sense, of which there are too many, but as a literal photograph of the
manners and habits of the nineteenth century, thrown on to paper
by the light of a powerful mind; and one also of the most artistic
effect. Mr. Thackeray has a peculiar adroitness in leading on the
fancy, or rather memory of his reader from one set of circumstances
to another by the seeming chances and coincidences of common life,
as an artist leads the spectator’s eye through the subject of his picture
by a skilful repetition of colour. This is why it is impossible to quote
from his book with any justice to it. The whole growth of the narra-
tive is so matted and inter-woven together with tendril-like links and
bindings, that there is no detaching a flower with sufficient length of
stalk to exhibit it to advantage. There is that mutual dependence in
his characters which is the first requisite in painting every-day life: no
one is stuck on a separate pedestal—no one is sitting for his portrait.
There may be one exception—we mean Sir Pitt Crawley, senior: it is
possible, nay, we hardly doubt, that this baronet was closer drawn
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1
Thackeray’s own illustration with this title shows Becky behind a curtain, menacing Jos
Sedley with a knife.
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from individual life than anybody else in the book; but granting that
fact, the animal was so unique an exception, that we wonder so
shrewd an artist could stick him into a gallery so full of our familiars.
The scenes in Germany, we can believe, will seem to many readers of
an English book hardly less extravagantly absurd—grossly and gratu-
itously overdrawn; but the initiated will value them as containing
some of the keenest strokes of truth and humour that Vanity Fair
exhibits, and not enjoy them the less for being at our neighbour’s
expense. For the thorough appreciation of the chief character they
are quite indispensable too. The whole course of the work may be
viewed as the Wander-Jahre of a far cleverer female Wilhelm Meister.
1
We
have watched her in the ups-and-downs of life—among the humble,
the fashionable, the great, and the pious—and found her ever new,
yet ever the same; but still Becky among the students was requisite to
complete the full measure of our admiration.
Jane Eyre, as a work, and one of equal popularity, is, in almost every
respect, a total contrast to Vanity Fair. The characters and events,
though some of them masterly in conception, are coined expressly
for the purpose of bringing out great effects. The hero and heroine
are beings both so singularly unattractive that the reader feels they
can have no vocation in the novel but to be brought together; and
they do things which, though not impossible, lie utterly beyond the
bounds of probability. On this account a short sketch of the plan
seems requisite; not but what it is a plan familiar enough to all read-
ers of novels—especially those of the old school and those of the
lowest school of our own day. For Jane Eyre is merely another
Pamela,
2
who, by the force of her character and the strength of her
principles, is carried victoriously through great trials and temptations
from the man she loves. Nor is she even a Pamela adapted and refined
to modern notions; for though the story is conducted without those
derelictions of decorum which we are to believe had their excuse in
the manners of Richardson’s time, yet it is stamped with a coarseness
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1
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s (1749–1842) 1822 bildungsroman. The second section
is entitled “Wander-Jahre,” a year of wanderings and discovery.
2
Servant-girl heroine in Samuel Richardson’s 1740–41 novel by that name.
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of language and laxity of tone which have certainly no excuse in ours.
It is a very remarkable book: we have no remembrance of another
combining such genuine power with such horrid taste. Both together
have equally assisted to gain the great popularity it has enjoyed; for
in these days of extravagant adoration of all that bears the stamp of
novelty and originality, sheer rudeness and vulgarity have come in for
a most mistaken worship.
The story is written in the first person. Jane begins with her earli-
est recollections, and at once takes possession of the reader’s intens-
est interest by the masterly picture of a strange and oppressed child
she raises up in a few strokes before him. She is an orphan, and a
dependant in the house of a selfish, hard-hearted aunt, against whom
the disposition of the little Jane chafes itself in natural antipathy, till
she contrives to make the unequal struggle as intolerable to her
oppressor as it is to herself. She is therefore, at eight years of age, got
rid of to a sort of Dothegirls Hall,
1
where she continues to enlist our
sympathies for a time with her little pinched fingers, cropped hair,
and empty stomach. But things improve: the abuses of the institution
are looked into. The Puritan patron, who holds that young orphan
girls are only safely brought up upon the rules of La Trappe,
2
is
superceded by an enlightened committee—the school assumes a
sound English character—Jane progresses from scholar to teacher,
and passes ten profitable and not unhappy years at Lowood. Then she
advertises for a situation as a governess, and obtains one immediately
in one of the midland counties. We see her, therefore, as she leaves
Lowood, to enter upon a new life—a small, plain, odd creature, who
has been brought up dry upon school learning, and somewhat
stunted accordingly in mind and body, and who is now thrown upon
the world as ignorant of its ways, and as destitute of its friendships, as
a shipwrecked mariner upon a strange coast.
Thornfield Hall is the property of Mr. Rochester—a bachelor
addicted to travelling. She finds it at first in all the peaceful prestige
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1
Play on “Dotheboys Hall,” the sadistic boarding school in Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby
(1838–39).
2
Trappists or Cistercians, order of monks noted for their strict discipline.
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of an English gentleman’s seat when “nobody is at the hall.” The
companions are an old decayed gentlewoman housekeeper—a far
away cousin of the squire’s—and a young French child, Jane’s pupil,
Mr. Rochester’s ward and reputed daughter. There is a pleasing
monotony in the summer solitude of the old country house, with its
comfort, respectability, and dulness, which Jane paints to the life; but
there is one circumstance which varies the sameness and casts a myste-
rious feeling over the scene. A strange laugh is heard from time to time
in a distant part of the house—a laugh which grates discordantly upon
Jane’s ear. She listens, watches, and inquires, but can discover nothing
but a plain matter of fact woman, who sits sewing somewhere in the
attics, and goes up and down stairs peaceably to and from her dinner
with the servants. But a mystery there is, though nothing betrays it, and
it comes in with marvellous effect from the monotonous reality of all
around. After awhile Mr. Rochester comes to Thornfield, and sends
for the child and her governess occasionally to bear him company. He
is a dark, strange-looking man—strong and large—of the brigand
stamp, with fine eyes and lowering brows—blunt and sarcastic in his
manners, with a kind of misanthropical frankness, which seems based
upon utter contempt for his fellow creatures, and a surly truthfulness
which is more rudeness than honesty. With his arrival disappears all
the prestige of country innocence that had invested Thornfield Hall.
He brings the taint of the world upon him, and none of its illusions.
The queer little governess is something new to him. He talks to her at
one time imperiously as to a servant, and at another recklessly as to a
man. He pours into her ears disgraceful tales of his past life, connected
with the birth of little Adèle, which any man with common respect for
a woman, and that a mere girl of eighteen, would have spared her; but
which eighteen in this case listens to as if it were nothing new, and
certainly nothing distasteful. He is captious and Turk-like—she is one
day his confidant, and another his unnoticed dependant. In short, by
her account, Mr. Rochester is a strange brute, somewhat in the Squire
Western style of absolute and capricious eccentricity, though
redeemed in him by signs of a cultivated intellect, and gleams of a
certain fierce justice of heart. He has a mind, and when he opens it at
all, he opens it freely to her. Jane becomes attached to her “master,”
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as Pamela-like she calls him, and it is not difficult to see that solitude
and propinquity are taking effect upon him also. An odd circumstance
heightens the dawning romance. Jane is awoke one night by that
strange discordant laugh close to her ear—then a noise as if hands
feeling along the wall. She rises—opens her door, finds the passage
full of smoke, is guided by it to her master’s room, whose bed she
discovers enveloped in flames, and by her timely aid saves his life. After
this they meet no more for ten days, when Mr. Rochester returns from
a visit to a neighbouring family, bringing with him a housefull of
distinguished guests; at the head of whom is Miss Blanche Ingram, a
haughty beauty of high birth, and evidently the especial object of the
Squire’s attentions—upon which tumultuous irruption Miss Eyre slips
back into her naturally humble position.
Our little governess is now summoned away to attend her aunt’s
death-bed, who is visited by some compunctions towards her, and she
is absent a month. When she returns Thornfield Hall is quit of all its
guests, and Mr. Rochester and she resume their former life of captious
cordiality on the one side, and diplomatic humility on the other. At
the same time the bugbear of Miss Ingram and of Mr. Rochester’s
engagement with her is kept up, though it is easy to see that this and
all concerning that lady is only a stratagem to try Jane’s character and
affection upon the most approved Griselda precedent. Accordingly an
opportunity for explanation ere long offers itself, where Mr. Rochester
has only to take it. Miss Eyre is desired to walk with him in shady alleys,
and to sit with him on the roots of an old chestnut-tree towards the
close of evening, and of course she cannot disobey her “master”—
whereupon there ensues a scene which as far as we remember, is new
equally in art or nature; in which Miss Eyre confesses her love—where-
upon Mr. Rochester drops not only his cigar (which she seems to be
in the habit of lighting for him) but his mask, and finally offers not
only heart, but hand. The wedding-day is soon fixed, but strange
misgivings and presentiments haunt the young lady’s mind. The night
but one before, her bed-room is entered by a horrid phantom, who
tries on the wedding veil, sends Jane into a swoon of terror, and defeats
all the favourite refuge of a bad dream by leaving the veil in two pieces.
But all is ready. The bride has no friends to assist—the couple walk to
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church—only the clergyman and the clerk are there—but Jane’s quick
eye has seen two figures lingering among the tombstones, and these
two follow them into church. The ceremony commences, when at the
due charge which summons any man to come forward and show just
cause why they should not be joined together, a voice interposes to
forbid the marriage. There is an impediment, and a serious one. The
bridegroom has a wife not only living, but living under the very roof
of Thornfield Hall. 
Hers was that discordant laugh which had so often caught Jane’s
ear; she it was who in her malice had tried to burn Mr. Rochester in
his bed—who had visited Jane by night and torn her veil, and whose
attendant was that same pretended sew-woman who had so strongly
excited Jane’s curiosity. For Mr. Rochester’s wife is a creature, half
fiend, half maniac, whom he had married in a distant part of the
world, and whom now, in his self-constituted code of morality, he had
thought it his right, and even his duty, to supersede by a more agree-
able companion. Now follow scenes of a truly tragic power. This is the
grand crisis in Jane’s life. Her whole soul is wrapt up in Mr. Rochester.
He has broken her trust, but not diminished her love. He entreats her
to accept all that he still can give, his heart and his home; he pleads
with the agony not only of a man who has never known what it was to
conquer a passion, but of one who, by that same self-constituted code,
now burns to atone for a disappointed crime. There is no one to help
her against him or against herself. Jane had no friends to stand by her
at the altar, and she has none to support her now she is plucked away
from it. There is no one to be offended or disgraced at her following
him to the sunny land of Italy, as he proposes, till the maniac should
die. There is no duty to any one but to herself, and this feeble reed
quivers and trembles beneath the overwhelming weight of love and
sophistry opposed to it. But Jane triumphs; in the middle of the night
she rises—glides out of her room—takes off her shoes as she passes
Mr. Rochester’s chamber;—leaves the house, and casts herself upon
a world more desert than ever to her—
Without a shilling and without a friend,
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Thus the great deed of self-conquest is accomplished; Jane has passed
through the fire of temptation from without and from within; her
character is stamped from that day; we need therefore follow her no
further into wanderings and sufferings which, though not unmixed
with plunder from Minerva-lane,
1
occupy some of, on the whole, the
most striking chapters in the book. Virtue of course finds her reward.
The maniac wife sets fire to Thornfield Hall, and perishes herself in
the flames. Mr. Rochester, in endeavouring to save her, loses the sight
of his eyes. Jane rejoins her blind master; they are married, after
which of course the happy man recovers his sight.
Such is the outline of a tale in which, combined with great mate-
rials for power and feeling, the reader may trace gross inconsistencies
and improbabilities, and chief and foremost that highest moral
offence a novel writer can commit, that of making an unworthy char-
acter interesting in the eyes of the reader. Mr. Rochester is a man who
deliberately and secretly seeks to violate the laws both of God and
man, and yet we will be bound half our lady readers are enchanted
with him for a model of generosity and honour. We would have
thought that such a hero had no chance, in the purer taste of the
present day; but the popularity of Jane Eyre is a proof how deeply the
love for illegitimate romance is implanted in our nature. Not that the
author is strictly responsible for this. Mr. Rochester’s character is toler-
ably consistent. He is made as coarse and as brutal as can in all
conscience be required to keep our sympathies at a distance. In point
of literary consistency the hero is at all events impugnable, though we
cannot say as much for the heroine.
As to Jane’s character—there is none of that harmonious unity
about it which made little Becky so grateful a subject of analysis—nor
are the discrepancies of that kind which have their excuse and their
response in our nature. The inconsistencies of Jane’s character lie
mainly not in her own imperfections, though of course she has her
share, but in the author’s. There is that confusion in the relations
between cause and effect, which is not so much untrue to human
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1
The Minerva Press (1790–1820) published lowbrow, popular fiction, much of it
romance or gothic.
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nature as to human art. The error in Jane Eyre is, not that her char-
acter is this or that, but that she is made one thing in the eyes of her
imaginary companions, and another in that of the actual reader.
There is a perpetual disparity between the account she herself gives
of the effect she produces, and the means shown us by which she
brings that effect about. We hear nothing but self-eulogiums on the
perfect tact and wondrous penetration with which she is gifted, and
yet almost every word she utters offends us, not only with the absence
of these qualities, but with the positive contrasts of them, in either
her pedantry, stupidity, or gross vulgarity. She is one of those ladies
who put us in the unpleasant predicament of undervaluing their very
virtues for dislike of the person in whom they are represented. One
feels provoked as Jane Eyre stands before us—for in the wonderful
reality of her thoughts and descriptions, she seems accountable for
all done in her name—with principles you must approve in the main,
and yet with language and manners that offend you in every particu-
lar. Even in that chef-d’oeuvre of brilliant retrospective sketching, the
description of her early life, it is the childhood and not the child that
interests you. The little Jane, with her sharp eyes and dogmatic
speeches, is a being you neither could fondle nor love. There is a
hardness in her infantine earnestness, and a spiteful precocity in her
reasoning, which repulses all our sympathy. One sees that she is of a
nature to dwell upon and treasure up every slight and unkindness,
real or fancied, and such natures we know are surer than any others
to meet with plenty of this sort of thing. As the child, so also the
woman—an uninteresting, sententious, pedantic thing; with no expe-
rience of the world, and yet with no simplicity or freshness in its stead.
What are her first answers to Mr. Rochester but such as would have
quenched all interest, even for a prettier woman, in any man of
common knowledge of what was nature—and especially in a blasé
monster like him? A more affected governessy effusion we never read.
The question is à propos of cadeaux.
“Who talks of cadeaux?” said he gruffly: “did you expect a pres-
ent, Miss Eyre? Are you fond of presents?” and he searched my
face with eyes that I saw were dark, irate, and piercing.
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“I hardly know, Sir; I have little experience of them; they are
generally thought pleasant things.” 
“Generally thought! But what do you think?”
“I should be obliged to take time, Sir, before I could give you
an answer worthy of your acceptance: a present has many faces
to it, has it not? and one should consider all before pronounc-
ing an opinion as to its nature.”
“Miss Eyre, you are not so unsophisticated as Adèle: she
demands a cadeau clamorously the moment she sees me; you
beat about the bush.”
“Because I have less confidence in my deserts than Adèle has;
she can prefer the right of old acquaintance and the right too of
custom; for she says you have always been in the habit of giving
her playthings; but if I had to make out a case I should be
puzzled, since I am a stranger, and have done nothing to entitle
me to an acknowledgment.”
“Oh! don’t fall back on over modesty! I have examined Adèle,
and find you have taken great pains with her: she is not bright—
she has no talent, yet in a short time she has made much
improvement.”
“Sir, you have now given me my cadeau; I am obliged to you: it
is the meed teachers most covet; praise of their pupil’s progress.”
“Humph!” said Mr. Rochester.—vol. i, p. 234.
Let us take a specimen of her again when Mr. Rochester brings
home his guests to Thornfield. The fine ladies of this world are a new
study to Jane, and capitally she describes her first impression of them
as they leave the dinner table and return to the drawing-room—noth-
ing can be more gracefully graphic than this.
There were but eight of them, yet somehow as they flocked in,
they gave the impression of a much larger number. Some of
them were very tall, and all had a sweeping amplitude of array
that seemed to magnify their persons as a mist magnifies the
moon. I rose and curtseyed to them: one or two bent their heads
in return; the others only stared at me.
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They dispersed about the room, reminding me, by the light-
ness and buoyancy of their movements, of a flock of white plumy
birds. Some of them threw themselves in half-reclining positions
on the sofa and ottomans; some bent over the tables and exam-
ined the flowers and books; the rest gathered in a group round
the fire: all talked in a low but clear tone which seemed habitual
to them.—vol. ii. p. 38.
But now for the reverse. The moment Jane Eyre sets these graceful crea-
tures conversing, she falls into mistakes which display not so much a
total ignorance of the habits of society, as a vulgarity of mind inherent
in herself. They talked together by her account like parvenues trying to
show off. They discuss the subject of governesses before her very face,
in what Jane affects to consider the exact tone of fashionable contempt.
They bully the servants in language no lady would dream of using to
her own—far less to those of her host and entertainer—though
certainly the “Sam” of Jane Eyre’s is not precisely the head servant one
is accustomed to meet with in houses of the Thornfield class. For
instance this is a conversation which occurs in her hearing. An old gypsy
has come to the Hall, and the servants can’t get rid of her—
“What does she want?” asked Mrs. Eshton.
“To tell the gentry their fortunes, she says, Ma’am: and she
swears she must and will do it.”
“What is she like?” inquired the Misses Eshton in a breath.
“A shocking ugly old creature, Miss; almost as black as a
crock.”
“Why she’s a real sorceress,” cried Frederick Lynn. “Let us
have her in of course.”
“My dear boys, what are you thinking about?” exclaimed Lady
Lynn.
“I cannot possibly countenance any such inconsistent
proceedings,” chimed in the Dowager Ingram.
“Indeed, Mama, but you can—and will,” pronounced the
haughty voice of Blanche, as she turned round on the piano-
stool, where till now she had sat silent, apparently examining
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sundry sheets of music. “I have a curiosity to hear my fortune
told: therefore, Sam, order the beldame forward.”
“My darling Blanche! recollect—”
“I do—I recollect all you can suggest; and I must have my
will—quick, Sam!”
“Yes—yes—yes,” cried all the juveniles, both ladies and gentle-
men. “Let her come, it will be excellent sport!”
The footman still lingered. “She looks such a rough one,”
said he. 
“Go!” ejaculated Miss Ingram, and the man went.
Excitement instantly seized the whole party; a running fire of
raillery and jests was proceeding when Sam returned.
“She won’t come now,” said he. “She says it is not her mission
to appear before the ‘vulgar herd’ (them’s her words). I must
show her into a room by herself, and them who wish to consult
her must go to her one by one.”
“You see now, my queenly Blanche,” began Lady Ingram, “she
encroaches. Be advised my angel girl—and—”
“Show her into the library of course,” cut in the “angel girl.”
“It is not my mission to listen to her before the vulgar herd either;
I mean to have her all to myself. Is there a fire in the library?”
“Yes, Ma’am, but she looks such a tinkler.”
“Cease that chatter, blockhead! and do my bidding!”—vol. ii.,
p. 82.
The old gypsy woman, by the way, turns out to be Mr. Rochester—
whom Jane of course alone recognises—as silly an incident as can well
be contrived. But the crowning scene is the offer—governesses are
said to be sly on such occasions, but Jane out-governesses them all—
little Becky would have blushed for her. They are sitting together at
the foot of the old chestnut tree, as we have already mentioned,
towards the close of evening, and Mr. Rochester is informing her, with
his usual delicacy of language, that he is engaged to Miss Ingram—“a
strapper! Jane, a real strapper!”—and that as soon as he brings home
his bride to Thornfield, she, the governess, must “trot forthwith”—
but that he shall make it his duty to look out for employment and an
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asylum for her—indeed, that he has already heard of a charming situ-
ation in the depths of Ireland—all with a brutal jocoseness which
most women of spirit, unless grievously despairing of any other lover,
would have resented, and any woman of sense would have seen
through. But Jane, that profound reader of the human heart, and
especially of Mr. Rochester’s, does neither. She meekly hopes she may
be allowed to stay where she is till she has found another shelter to
betake herself to—she does not fancy going to Ireland—Why?
“It is a long way off, Sir.” “No matter—a girl of your sense will not
object to the voyage or the distance.” “Not the voyage, but the
distance, Sir; and then the sea is a barrier—” “From what, Jane?”
“From England, and from Thornfield; and—” “Well?” “From you,
sir.”—vol. ii., p. 205
and then the lady bursts into tears in the most approved fashion.
Although so clever in giving hints, how wonderfully slow she is in
taking them! Even when, tired of his cat’s play, Mr. Rochester
proceeds to rather indubitable demonstrations of affection—“enclos-
ing me in his arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my
lips”—Jane has no idea what he can mean. Some ladies would have
thought it high time to leave the Squire alone with his chestnut tree;
or, at all events, unnecessary to keep up that tone of high-souled femi-
nine obtusity which they are quite justified in adopting if gentlemen
will not speak out—but Jane again does neither. Not that we say she
was wrong, but quite the reverse, considering the circumstances of
the case—Mr. Rochester was her master, and “Duchess or nothing”
was her first duty—only she was not quite so artless as the author
would have us suppose.
But if the manner in which she secures the prize be not inadmissi-
ble according to the rules of the art, that in which she manages it when
caught, is quite without authority or precedent, except perhaps in the
servants’ hall. Most lover’s play is wearisome and nonsensical to the
lookers on—but the part Jane assumes is one which could only be effi-
ciently sustained by the substitution of Sam for her master. Coarse as
Mr. Rochester is, one winces for him under the infliction of this
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housemaid beau idéal of the arts of coquetry. A little more, and we
should have flung the book aside to lie for ever among the trumpery
with which such scenes ally it; but it were a pity to have halted here,
for wonderful things lie beyond—scenes of suppressed feeling, more
fearful to witness than the most violent tornados of passion—struggles
with such intense sorrow and suffering as it is sufficient misery to know
that any one should have conceived, far less passed through; and yet
with that stamp of truth which takes precedence in the human heart
before actual experience. The flippant, fifth-rate, plebeian actress has
vanished, and only a noble, high-souled woman, bound to us by the
reality of her sorrow, and yet raised above us by the strength of her will,
stands in actual life before us. If this be Jane Eyre, the author has done
her injustice hitherto, not we. Let us look at her in the first recogni-
tion of her sorrow after the discomfiture of the marriage. True, it is
not the attitude of a Christian, who knows that all things work together
for good to those who love God, but it is a splendidly drawn picture of
a natural heart, of high power, intense feeling, and fine religious
instinct, falling prostrate, but not grovelling, before the tremendous
blast of sudden affliction. The house is cleared of those who had come
between her and a disgraceful happiness.
1
•••
We have said that this was the picture of a natural heart. This, to our
view, is the great and crying mischief of the book. Jane Eyre is through-
out the personification of an unregenerate and undisciplined spirit, the
more dangerous to exhibit from that prestige of principle and self-
control which is liable to dazzle the eye too much for it to observe the
inefficient and unsound foundation on which it rests. It is true Jane does
right, and exerts great moral strength, but it is the strength of a mere
heathen mind which is a law unto itself. No Christian grace is percepti-
ble upon her. She has inherited in fullest measure the worst sin of our
fallen nature—the sin of pride. Jane Eyre is proud, and therefore she is
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1
Eastlake here quotes a long passage from the conclusion of volume 2 (chapter 26) of
Jane Eyre.
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ungrateful too. It pleased God to make her an orphan, friendless, and
penniless—yet she thanks nobody, and least of all Him, for the food
and raiment, the friends, companions, and instructors of her helpless
youth—for the care and education vouchsafed to her till she was capa-
ble in mind as fitted in years to provide for herself. On the contrary,
she looks upon all that has been done for her not only as her
undoubted right, but as falling far short of it. The doctrine of humility
is not more foreign to her mind than it is repudiated by her heart. It is
by her own talents, virtues, and courage that she is made to attain the
summit of human happiness, and, as far as Jane Eyre’s own statement
is concerned, no one would think that she owed anything either to God
above or to man below. She flees from Mr. Rochester, and has not a
being to turn to. Why was this? The excellence of the present institu-
tion at Casterton, which succeeded that of Cowan Bridge near Kirkby
Lonsdale—these being distinctly, as we hear, the original and the
reformed Lowoods of the book—is pretty generally known. Jane had
lived there for eight years with 110 girls and fifteen teachers. Why had
she formed no friendships among them? Other orphans have left the
same and similar institutions, furnished with friends for life, and
puzzled with homes to choose from. How comes it that Jane had
acquired neither? Among that number of associates there were surely
some exceptions to what she so presumptuously stigmatises as “the soci-
ety of inferior minds.” Of course it suited the author’s end to represent
the heroine as utterly destitute of the common means of assistance, in
order to exhibit both her trials and her powers of self-support—the
whole book rests on this assumption—but it is one which, under the
circumstances, is very unnatural and very unjust.
Altogether the auto-biography of Jane Eyre is pre-eminently an
anti-Christian composition. There is throughout it a murmuring
against the comforts of the rich and against the privations of the poor,
which, as far as each individual is concerned, is a murmuring against
God’s appointment—there is a proud and perpetual assertion of the
rights of man, for which we find no authority either in God’s word or
in God’s providence—there is that pervading tone of ungodly discon-
tent which is at once the most prominent and the most subtle evil
which the law and the pulpit, which all civilized society in fact has at
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the present day to contend with. We do not hesitate to say, that the
tone of mind and thought which has overthrown authority and
violated every code human and divine abroad, and fostered Chartism
and rebellion at home, is the same which has also written Jane Eyre.
Still we say again this is a very remarkable book. We are painfully alive
to the moral, religious, and literary deficiencies of the picture, and such
passages of beauty and power as we have quoted cannot redeem it, but
it is impossible not to be spellbound with the freedom of the touch. It
would be mere hackneyed courtesy to call it “fine writing.” It bears no
impress of being written at all, but is poured out rather in the heat and
hurry of an instinct, which flows ungovernably on to its object, indif-
ferent by what means it reaches it, and unconscious too. As regards the
author’s chief object, however, it is a failure—that, namely, of making
a plain, odd woman, destitute of all the conventional features of femi-
nine attraction, interesting in our sight. We deny that he has succeeded
in this. Jane Eyre, in spite of some grand things about her, is a being
totally uncongenial to our feelings from beginning to end. We acknowl-
edge her firmness—we respect her determination—we feel for her
struggles; but, for all that, and setting aside higher considerations, the
impression she leaves on our mind is that of a decidedly vulgar-minded
woman—one whom we should not care for as an acquaintance, whom
we should not seek as a friend, whom we should not desire for a rela-
tion, and whom we should scrupulously avoid for a governess.
There seems to have arisen in the novel-reading world some doubts
as to who really wrote this book; and various rumours, more or less
romantic, have been current in Mayfair, the metropolis of gossip, as to
the authorship. For example, Jane Eyre is sentimentally assumed to have
proceeded from the pen of Mr. Thackeray’s governess, whom he had
himself chosen as his model of Becky, and who, in mingled love and
revenge, personified him in return as Mr. Rochester. In this case, it is
evident that the author of Vanity Fair, whose own pencil makes him
grey-haired, has had the best of it, though his children may have had
the worst, having, at all events, succeeded in hitting that vulnerable
point in the Becky bosom, which it is our firm belief no man born of
woman, from her Soho to her Ostend days, had ever so much as
grazed. To this ingenious rumour the coincidence of the second
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edition of Jane Eyre being dedicated to Mr. Thackeray has probably
given rise. For our parts, we see no great interest in the question at all.
The first edition of Jane Eyre purports to be edited by Currer Bell, on
of a trio of brothers, or sisters, or cousins, by names Currer, Acton, and
Ellis Bell, already known as the joint-authors of a volume of poems.
The second edition the same—dedicated, however, by the author to
Mr. Thackeray; and the dedication (itself an indubitable chip of Jane
Eyre) signed Currer Bell. Author and editor therefore are one, and
we are as much satisfied to accept this double individual under the
name of “Currer Bell,” as under any other, more or less euphonious.
Whoever it be, it is a person who, with great mental powers, combines
a total ignorance of the habits of society, a great coarseness of taste,
and a heathenish doctrine of religion. And as these characteristics
appear more or less in the writings of all three, Currer, Acton, and Ellis
alike, for their poems differ less in degree of power than in kind, we
are ready to accept the fact of their identity or of their relationship
with equal satisfaction. At all events there can be no interest attached
to the writer of Wuthering Heights—a novel succeeding Jane Eyre, and
purporting to be written by Ellis Bell—unless it were for the sake of
more individual reprobation. For though there is a decided family like-
ness between the two, yet the aspect of the Jane and Rochester animals
in their native state, as Catherine and Heathfield,
1
is too odiously and
abominably pagan to be palatable even to the most vitiated class of
English readers. With all the unscrupulousness of the French school
of novels it combines that repulsive vulgarity in the choice of its vice
which supplies its own antidote. The question of authorship, there-
fore, can deserve a moment’s curiosity only as far as Jane Eyre is
concerned, and though we cannot pronounce that it appertains to a
real Mr. Currer Bell and to no other, yet that it pertains to a man, and
not, as many assert, to a woman, we are strongly inclined to affirm.
Without entering into the question whether the power of the writing
be above her, or the vulgarity below her, there are, we believe, minu-
tiae of circumstantial evidence which at once acquit the feminine
hand. No woman—a lady friend, whom we are always happy to consult,
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1
Heathcliff.
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assures us—makes mistakes in her own métier—no woman trusses game
and garnishes dessert-dishes with the same hands, or talks of so doing
in the same breath. Above all, no woman attires another in such fancy
dresses as Jane’s ladies assume—Miss Ingram coming down, irre-
sistible, “in a morning robe of sky-blue crape, a gauze azure scarf twisted
in her hair!!” No lady, we understand, when suddenly routed in the
night, would think of hurrying on “a frock.” They have garments more
convenient for such occasions, and more becoming too. This evidence
seems incontrovertible. Even granting that these incongruities were
purposely assumed, for the sake of disguising the female pen, there is
nothing gained; for if we ascribe the book to a woman at all, we have
no alternative but to ascribe it to one who has, for some sufficient
reason, long forfeited the society of her own sex.
And if by no woman, it is certainly also by no artist. The Thackeray
eye has had no part there. There is not more disparity between the
art of drawing Jane assumes and her evident total ignorance of its first
principles, than between the report she gives of her own character
and the conclusions we form for ourselves. Not but what, in another
sense, the author may be classed as an artist of very high grade. Let
him describe the simplest things in nature—a rainy landscape, a
cloudy sky, or a bare moorside, and he shows the hand of a master;
but the moment he talks of the art itself, it is obvious that he is a
complete ignoramus.
1
SOURCE
Quarterly Review 84 (December 1848).
SELECTED SECONDARY READING
Lochhead, Marion. Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake. London: Murray,
1961.
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1
In the last section of this review, Eastlake discusses the plight of actual governesses, as
described in the 1847 report of the Governesses Benevolent Institution. Suggesting that
many families have hired governesses (at paltry wages) merely out of laziness or for
show, she urges women either to pay their governesses better wages and pensions, or to
educate their daughters themselves.
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eliza cook (1818–89) was born in London to a family of
the artisan class and grew up in the Sussex countryside. Largely
self-educated, she began to write poetry very early. Her mother,
who had encouraged her gifts, died when Eliza was 15, and the
loss motivated some of Cook’s best-known lyrics, including “The
Old Arm-Chair.” Cook published her first volume of poems,
Lays of a Wild Harp (1835), when she was only 17 and thereafter
published in popular periodicals like the New Monthly Magazine,
winning both popular and critical acclaim for her simple and
direct lyrics and for her great sympathy with the unfortunate or
marginalized. She eventually published two more volumes of
poetry, Melaia and Other Poems (1838) and New Echoes and Other
Poems (1864), as well as collected editions of her work. While
much of her early poetry is extremely sentimental, her more
mature poetry frequently sounds political notes and evinces a
rousing command of language. Some of her later work was
published in the radical paper The North Star.
By the mid-1840s, Cook had moved to London, where
both her literary reputation and her unconventional, unfem-
inine dress drew attention. From 1845 to about 1849, she was
the companion of the American actress Charlotte Cushman,
to whom she addressed a number of passionate poems. The
relationship seems to have foundered both because Cook was
unwilling to travel and because of Cushman’s budding rela-
tionship with journalist and actress Matilda (“Max”) Hays. 
74
PEOPLE WHO DO NOT LIKE POETRY
(MAY 1849)
Eliza Cook
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In 1849, Cook launched a weekly magazine, Eliza Cook’s
Journal. Directed primarily at women, the Journal published a
mix of poetry, housekeeping tips, children’s features, and
informational essays. Cook’s politics were outspokenly
progressive, and Eliza Cook’s Journal consistently called for
expanded vocational opportunities for women and the work-
ing classes, the opening of public libraries and museums, and
a general democratization of British society. Cook directed
the Journal until 1854, when ill-health forced her to retire. In
1863, she was granted a Civil List pension, and she seems to
have lived as a semi-recluse until her death.
While contributors to Eliza Cook’s Journal such as Samuel
Smiles, author of Self-Help, stressed hard work and self-denial
as the keys to self-improvement, Cook herself heralded the
importance of the arts, especially poetry, in elevating the
human spirit. The following piece is typical of Cook’s lighter
criticism. Originally published in 1849 in Eliza Cook’s Journal,
and republished in Cook’s 1860 essay anthology Jottings from
My Journal, “People Who Do Not Like Poetry” gently satirizes
the pragmatic, utilitarian mindset that Dickens savaged in the
opening chapters of Hard Times. People who do not like
poetry, Cook asserts, lack an essential element of romance:
they “have no ear for music in a ‘babbling brook,’ without the
said brook turns a very profitable mill.” But worse, this lack
of romance signals an absence of essential human sympathy:
“they see nothing in the attachment between a poor man and
his cur dog, but a crime worthy the imprisonment of one, and
the hanging of the other.” In Cook’s analysis, those who main-
tained a poetic imagination even without reading “a line of
printed cadence” were to be admired—the others to be
avoided at all costs.
we have often heard poetry spoken of by certain shal-
low-hearted, hammer-headed people, as an infinite something of
people who do not like poetry
75
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meretricious nothingness, if one may use an Irishism. They look
upon poetry as a sort of fantastic, gossamer cobweb, woven by the
hand of unrecognized insanity, and wonder it should be permitted
to flit about the highways of the world; they flout it as a trumpery and
contemptible production of no earthly use, and of course their prac-
tical statistics never descend to the question of ornament. They are
totally ignorant that Poetry is identified and incorporated in the
primitive elements of all that makes God visible and man glorious;
they know not that poetry is co-existent with a flourishing state and
a great people; they know not that it is poetic instinct which prompts
a Washington to free his country, and calls the tear of repentance
into the felon’s eye, as he wakes from a dream of green fields and his
mother. They only comprehend there is something arranged in sylla-
bles, that this something is unprofitable and ridiculous, composed
of imaginary trash, and called poetry. It is “stuff,” “rubbish,”
“nonsense,” and in the arrogance of their self-sufficiency, we have
heard those people rash enough to assert, that they could see no
great use in Shakspere’s plays. To listen to the arguments, or rather,
declarations, of those dealers in hardware, one would think the
Creator had sadly wasted his might and ingenuity in scattering the
profusions of exquisite matter about us, which we have yet been
unable to convert into tangible utility or mercenary profit. One
would be induced to fancy that the myriads of sweet-bosomed, bright-
headed flowers, flung on the untrodden valleys and mountain-sides,
should be exterminated from the land, since they cannot be packed
into bales of merchandize, nor cast up in day-books. We should begin
to interrogate the wisdom of sending unnumbered nightingales and
thrushes, for the express purpose of whistling away with all their
might in the green boughs, and yet yielding nothing in the great
“commercial account.” Be it understood, that by “people who do not
like poetry,” we have no intention of alluding to those who may have
no special devotion to measured feet and gentle rhythm. We advert
not to the myriads who go about their business in everyday sobriety;
who live, die, woo, wed, make fortunes, or become bankrupts, and
fill up the ranks of life without the slightest knowledge of poetry in
its tangible and professed sense.
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Such heads may be totally unacquainted with the classical existence
of a Helicon.
1
They may never dream deliciously in the fairy-land of a
Spencer, and even be unfamiliar with the voice of a Goldsmith.
2
Yet we
see hundreds of these people, with the spirit of poetry playing about
them in revelling gambols, at every opportunity the chances of fate may
offer. The most exquisite love of the ideal, and the most ardent glow of
enthusiasm, often abide in the bosom that knows not the name of its
residents; and many a rough-hewn denizen of earth goes from his
cradle to his grave, full of rich, sweet poetry, without even a suspicion
of the “divinity that stirs within him.” No! it is not these people we
anathematize, for these are the mysterious and ceaseless echoings of
the first great Voice that pronounced all things good and beautiful.
These unconsciously pour forth the perfumed incense of immortality,
purifying the foul vapours that gather so chokingly in God’s Great
temple. No! it is not these we denounce, for we worship and honour
the untold numbers who think and feel poetry in its noblest essence,
yet never breathe, and seldom read, a line of printed cadence.
It is the flinty, crude mass of “utilitarianism,” the hard, unbending
unit of creation, standing in upright, frozen selfishness, entertaining
no speculation but that depending on a thriving railway, and respect-
ing no laws but those of Blackstone and Coke; those who depreciate
all knowledge, save that denominated “worldly”; a knowledge too
frequently testified by conduct that would bear the less equivocal term
of “craft”; those who sneer at a sentiment, and despise a feeling that
may go an inch beyond the very commonest of sense; it is such we
most heartily pray to be delivered from during our sojourn here
below. They may be useful and necessary—so may the cholera; but in
honest simplicity, we desire to keep clear of both inflictions.
These people have no ear for music in a “babbling brook,” without
the said brook turns a very profitable mill. They find no “sermons in
stones,” beyond those preached by the walls of a Royal Exchange.
They see nothing in a mob of ragged urchins loitering about the
people who do not like poetry
77
1
In Greek mythology, the home of the nine Muses, and thus the source of poetic inspiration.
2
Edmund Spenser (1552–99), English poet, whose best-known work is his Faerie Queene
(1590); Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74), Irish poet.
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streets in a spring twilight, busy over a handful of buttercups and
daisies, lugged with anxious care from Putney or Clapham—they see
nothing but a tribe of tiresome children who deserve, and sometimes
get, a box on the ears for “being in the way.” They see nothing in the
attachment between a poor man and his cur dog, but a crime worthy
the imprisonment of one, and the hanging of the other. Indeed, we
have remarked that these “people who do not like poetry” seldom
have sympathy for mendacity of any description. If a sick woman with
a sicklier child, or an old man with palsied limbs, solicit a halfpenny,
these people have a stereotyped knack of parading the comforts of
the “Union,”
1
and the audacity of “going about begging.” If an
orphan boy of Seven Dials’ genealogy is recommended by some
benevolent idiot to clean boots and shoes, “they will have no such
young scamp about them.”—“But he has not yet done anything
dishonest,” says the pleader for poverty. “No matter,” is the reply; “I
shan’t take him, and there’s an end of it.” Ah! these people are doubt-
less “wise in their generation.” It is too true that imposition and
ingratitude are stalking about us everywhere; the pale woman and the
trembling man may not be quite so wretched as they seem, and the
offspring of ignorance and misery may not prove a moral Crichton;
2
yet, with a “day of judgment” in the Christian’s distance, we have a
prejudice in favour of giving an odd penny now and then, without too
strict inquiry as to whether the applicant’s cup of sorrow is brimfull;
and we have a prejudice equally strong, that it is not contrary to
human philosophy to endeavour to “snatch a brand from the burn-
ing,”
3
and give the chance of honest pursuits to the children of
infamy, even though they have “no character” to begin with.
“People who do not like poetry” have rarely much participation in
the elasticities of our moral lot. Eating, drinking, sleeping, and “look-
ing to the main chance,” generally form their whole consecutive occu-
pations; but, if any occasional development of humour and
cheerfulness occur in the genus, we have observed that it usually tends
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78
1
Poorhouse or workhouse.
2
Possible allusion to Dr. James Crichton (1765–1823), founder of a mental hospital offer-
ing the “moral treatment” of patients, a scheme based on kindness and individualized care.
3
Proverbial saying, from Zechariah 3:2.
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to “practical joking and coarse badinage.” This is the lowest, and appar-
ently, the only grade of wit they are capable of exercising with any facil-
ity; but with the utmost touchiness, at the same time, if any responsive
liberty be taken with their own respected person. The spirit of poetry
at least instils the justice of bearing that which we are eager to award;
but our utilitarians have no notion of this. Some of them even advocate
the strong practical joke of killing off the superfluous population, but
we never find their own names on the superabundant list.
“People who do not like poetry” are invariably the most revenge-
ful in their animosities. They hold malice with strong tenacity; forgiv-
ing and forgetting are not in their creed; and their bosoms seem
charged with an ascetic vengeance, that is never neutralized by the
weak, ridiculous, humanizing spirit of poetry.
“People who do not like poetry” are the worst possible compan-
ions, in any shape. Take them on a tour through a lovely country, and
they see nothing at all in the tumbling waterfall or Elysian valley, but
are eternally breaking in on your rapt admiration, with some abrupt
and common-place jargon, that raises a strong desire to serve them
as Crooked Richard did his nephews.
1
Have them at a social dinner-
party, and they strenuously seek to limit the conversation to “dry and
dusty business” of some kind or other; party politics, state of divi-
dends, joint-stock companies, the cotton market, or some such
themes, are all they can dilate on; and with loud and pertinacious
determination they “stick to their last,” to the exclusion of general
and polite interchange of discussions and opinions. Walk with them
into an exhibition of paintings, and, most likely, you will have to blush
up to your ears, for they treat all things connected with “Fine Arts” as
mere trumpery, and, of course, make very audible and very ignorant
remarks on matters, concerning which, the slightest poetical delicacy
would make them silent. Meet them when you are attired in a new
garb of deep mourning, and their first question will be, “Who have
you lost?” Let a child cry in their presence, and they instantly express
an impatient disgust, that would warrant one in supposing that they
people who do not like poetry
79
1
Richard III (1452–85) was suspected of having had his nephews put to death to protect
his own claim to the throne.
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had passed through infancy without a single kick or scream. Let an
old horse, that has worked twenty years in their service, be
pronounced unfit for his duty, and they coolly take forty shillings and
consign the worn-out beast to cruelty, starvation, and “a sand-cart,”
without a ghost of conscience.
Oh! these “people who do not like poetry” are sad thorns in the
side of refined humanity. We repeat, they may be useful; but we
honestly confess, if we have one prejudice stronger than another, it
exists against those animated fossils who “do not like poetry.”
SOURCE
Eliza Cook’s Journal (May 1849); reprinted in Jottings from My Journal
(London, 1860).
SELECTED SECONDARY READING
“Eliza Cook.” Notable Women of Our Own Times: A Collection of Biographies
of Royal and Other Ladies Celebrated in Literature, Art, and Society.
London: Ward, Lock, [1883].
Merrill, Lisa. When Romeo Was a Woman: Charlotte Cushman and Her
Circle of Female Spectators. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1999.
Robinson, Solveig C. “Of ‘Haymakers’ and ‘City Artisans’: The
Chartist Poetics of Eliza Cook’s Songs of Labor.” Victorian Poetry
39.2 (2001): 229–53.
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charlotte brontë (1816–55) was born in Yorkshire,
the third of six children of a clergyman and his wife. The family
was early struck by tragedy: a few years after their mother died
of cancer, Charlotte’s two older sisters sickened and died. The
surviving children, thrown frequently upon their own resources,
paired off—Charlotte with her brother Branwell (born 1817),
and the younger sisters Emily (born 1818) and Anne (born
1820)—and created imaginary worlds that were to serve as the
inspiration for their more mature poetry and fiction.
Aware that they would need to be self-supporting,
Charlotte aFnd her sisters sought educational opportunities
to train themselves for governessing or, ideally, to run their
own school. All three attended the Roe Head school (Emily
for less than a year), where Charlotte remained to teach.
Charlotte and Emily also studied languages in Brussels. The
dream of opening their own school was never realized, but in
1845 Charlotte convinced her sisters to attempt a literary
career. Their joint volume of verse appeared in 1846 and
introduced the androgynous pseudonyms they were to
employ during their brief careers: Acton (Anne), Ellis
(Emily), and Currer (Charlotte) Bell. The following year,
Anne’s and Emily’s first novels, Agnes Grey and Wuthering
Heights, were accepted for publication, but Charlotte’s was
not. Undaunted, Charlotte began a new novel which was
accepted and published immediately. Jane Eyre (1847), with
81
EDITOR’S PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION OF
WUTHERING HEIGHTS
(1850)
Charlotte Brontë
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its plain and rebellious heroine, marked a watershed in
English fiction.
The tragedy that had shadowed her family’s early years
returned during a terrible eight-month period in 1848 to
1849, during which time Branwell, Emily, and Anne died.
The necessity of sorting out for posterity the authorship of
her own and her sisters’ works prompted Charlotte to agree
to write introductory prefaces for the reissues of Emily’s and
Anne’s novels. In her Preface to Wuthering Heights, Charlotte
creates an origin myth to respond to critics’ charges that her
sister’s novel is “coarse” and its author unladylike. Painting
Emily as an unschooled child of nature, Charlotte depicts the
novel as the work of relative immaturity. “Had she but lived,”
she declares, Emily’s mind would have grown like a tree,
“loftier, straighter, wider-spreading, and its matured fruits
would have attained a mellower ripeness and sunnier bloom.”
Nevertheless, Wuthering Heights itself is described as a work of
monumental weight and impact, one that will permanently
loom over the literary landscape.
i have just read over Wuthering Heights, and, for the first
time, have obtained a clear glimpse of what are termed (and, perhaps,
really are) its faults; have gained a definite notion of how it appears
to other people—to strangers who knew nothing of the author; who
are unacquainted with the locality where the scenes of the story are
laid; to whom the inhabitants, the customs, the natural characteris-
tics of the outlying hills and hamlets in the West-Riding of Yorkshire
are things alien and unfamiliar.
To all such Wuthering Heights must appear a rude and strange
production. The wild moors of the north of England can for them
have no interest; the language, the manners, the very dwellings and
household customs of the scattered inhabitants of those districts, must
be to such readers in a great measure unintelligible, and—where intel-
ligible—repulsive. Men and women who, perhaps, naturally very calm,
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and with feelings moderate in degree, and little marked in kind, have
been trained from their cradle to observe the utmost evenness of
manner and guardedness of language, will hardly know what to make
of the rough, strong utterance, the harshly manifested passions, the
unbridled aversions, and headlong partialities of unlettered moorland
hinds and rugged moorland squires, who have grown up untaught and
unchecked, except by mentors as harsh as themselves. A large class of
readers, likewise, will suffer greatly from the introduction into the
pages of this work of words printed with all their letters, which it has
become the custom to represent by the initial and final letter only—a
blank line filling the interval. I may as well say at once that, for this
circumstance, it is out of my power to apologize; deeming it, myself, a
rational plan to write words at full length. The practice of hinting by
single letters those expletives with which profane and violent persons
are wont to garnish their discourse, strikes me as a proceeding which,
however well meant, is weak and futile. I cannot tell what good it
does—what feeling it spares—what horror it conceals.
With regard to the rusticity of Wuthering Heights, I admit the charge,
for I feel the quality. It is rustic all through. It is moorish, and wild, and
knotty as a root of heath. Nor was it natural that it should be otherwise;
the author being herself a native and nursling of the moors. Doubtless,
had her lot been cast in a town, her writings, if she had written at all,
would have possessed another character. Even had chance or taste led
her to choose a similar subject, she would have treated it otherwise.
Had Ellis Bell been a lady or a gentleman accustomed to what is called
“the world,” her view of a remote and unreclaimed region, as well as of
the dwellers therein, would have differed greatly from that actually
taken by the homebred country girl. Doubtless it would have been
wider—more comprehensive; whether it would have been more origi-
nal or more truthful is not so certain. As far as the scenery and locality
are concerned, it could scarcely have been so sympathetic: Ellis Bell did
not describe as one whose eye and taste alone found pleasure in the
prospect; her native hills were far more to her than a spectacle; they
were what she lived in, and by, as much as the wild birds, their tenants,
or as the heather, their produce. Her descriptions, then, of natural
scenery, are what they should be, and all they should be.
editor’s preface to the new edition of WUTHERING HEIGHTS
83
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Where delineation of human character is concerned, the case is
different. I am bound to avow that she had scarcely more practical
knowledge of the peasantry amongst whom she lived, than a nun has
of the country people who sometimes pass her convent gates. My sister’s
disposition was not naturally gregarious; circumstances favoured and
fostered her tendency to seclusion; except to go to church or take a
walk on the hills, she rarely crossed the threshold of home. Though her
feeling for the people round was benevolent, intercourse with them
she never sought; nor, with very few exceptions, ever experienced. And
yet she knew them: knew their ways, their language, their family histo-
ries; she could hear of them with interest and talk of them with detail,
minute, graphic, and accurate; but with them, she rarely exchanged a
word. Hence it ensued that what her mind had gathered of the real
concerning them, was too exclusively confined to those tragic and terri-
ble traits of which, in listening to the secret annals of every rude vici-
nage, the memory is sometimes compelled to receive the impress. Her
imagination, which was a spirit more sombre than sunny, more power-
ful than sportive, found in such traits material whence it wrought
creations like Heathcliff, like Earnshaw, like Catherine. Having formed
these beings, she did not know what she had done. If the auditor of her
work when read in manuscript, shuddered under the grinding influ-
ence of natures so relentless and implacable, of spirits so lost and fallen;
if it was complained that the mere hearing of certain vivid and fearful
scenes banished sleep by night, and disturbed mental peace by day, Ellis
Bell would wonder what was meant, and suspect the complainant of
affectation. Had she but lived, her mind would of itself have grown like
a strong tree, loftier, straighter, wider-spreading, and its matured fruits
would have attained a mellower ripeness and sunnier bloom; but on
that mind time and experience alone could work: to the influence of
other intellects, it was not amenable.
Having avowed that over much of Wuthering Heights there broods “a
horror of great darkness”;
1
that, in its storm-heated and electrical
atmosphere, we seem at times to breathe lightning, let me point to
those spots where clouded daylight and the eclipsed sun still attest
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84
1
See Genesis 15:12.
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their existence. For a specimen of true benevolence, and homely
fidelity, look at the character of Nelly Dean; for an example of
constancy and tenderness, remark that of Edgar Linton. (Some people
will think these qualities do not shine so well incarnate in a man as
they would do in a woman, but Ellis Bell could never be brought to
comprehend this notion: nothing moved her more than any insinua-
tion that the faithfulness and clemency, the long-suffering and loving-
kindness which are esteemed virtues in the daughters of Eve, become
foibles in the sons of Adam. She held that mercy and forgiveness are
the divinest attributes of the Great Being who made both man and
woman, and that what clothes the Godhead in glory, can disgrace no
form of feeble humanity.) There is a dry saturnine humour in the
delineation of old Joseph, and some glimpses of grace and gaiety
animate the younger Catherine. Nor is even the first heroine of the
name destitute of a certain strange beauty in her fierceness, or of
honesty in the midst of perverted passion and passionate perversity.
Heathcliff, indeed, stands unredeemed; never once swerving in his
arrow-straight course to perdition, from the time when “the little
black-haired, swarthy thing, as dark as if it came from the Devil,” was
first unrolled out of the bundle and set on its feet in the farm-house
kitchen, to the hour when Nelly Dean found the grim, stalwart corpse
laid on its back in the panel-enclosed bed, with wide-gazing eyes that
seemed “to sneer at her attempt to close them, and parted lips and
sharp white teeth that sneered too.”
Heathcliff betrays one solitary human feeling, and that is not his
love for Catherine; which is a sentiment fierce and inhuman: a
passion such as might boil and glow in the bad essence of some evil
genius; a fire that might form the tormented centre—the ever-suffer-
ing soul of a magnate of the infernal world: and by its quenchless and
ceaseless ravage effect the execution of the decree which dooms him
to carry Hell with him wherever he wanders. No; the single link that
connects Heathcliff with humanity is his rudely confessed regard for
Hareton Earnshaw—the young man whom he has ruined; and then
his half-implied esteem for Nelly Dean. These solitary traits omitted,
we should say he was child neither of Lascar nor gipsy, but a man’s
shape animated by demon life—a Ghoul—an Afreet.
editor’s preface to the new edition of WUTHERING HEIGHTS
85
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Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I
do not know: I scarcely think it is. But this I know; the writer who
possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always
master—something that at times strangely wills and works for itself.
He may lay down rules and devise principles, and to rules and prin-
ciples it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and then, haply with-
out any warning of revolt, there comes a time when it will no longer
consent “to harrow the vallies or be bound with a band in the
furrow”—when it “laughs at the multitude of the city, and regards not
the crying of the driver”
1
—when, refusing absolutely to make ropes
out of sea-sand any longer, it sets to work on statue-hewing, and you
have a Pluto or a Jove, a Tisiphone
2
or a Psyche, a Mermaid or a
Madonna, as Fate or Inspiration direct. Be the work grim or glorious,
dread or divine, you have little choice left but quiescent adoption. As
for you—the nominal artist—your share in it has been to work
passively under dictates you neither delivered nor could question—
that would not be uttered at your prayer, nor suppressed nor changed
at your caprice. If the result be attractive, the world will praise you,
who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same World will blame
you, who almost as little deserve blame.
Wuthering Heights was hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools
out of homely materials. The statuary found a granite block on soli-
tary moor: gazing thereon, he saw how from the crag might be
elicited a head, savage swart, sinister; a form moulded with at least
one element of grandeur—power. He wrought with a rude chisel, and
from no model but the vision of his meditations. With time and
labour, the crag took human shape; and there it stands colossal, dark
and frowning, half statue, half rock: in the former sense, terrible and
goblin-like; in the latter, almost beautiful, for its colouring is of
mellow grey, and moorland moss clothes it; and heath, with its bloom-
ing bells and balmy fragrance, grows faithfully close to the giant’s foot.
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86
1
See Job 39.
2
In Greek mythology, Tisiphone is an Erinye, an avenger of murder.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 86
SOURCE
Wuthering Heights (London, 1850).
SELECTED SECONDARY READING
Allott, Miriam F., ed. The Brontës: The Critical Heritage. London:
Routledge, 1974.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. 1857. Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1981.
editor’s preface to the new edition of WUTHERING HEIGHTS
87
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mary ann (later marian) evans (1819–80) was
the youngest child of a county estate manager and his second
wife. Educated at boarding schools in Attleborough,
Nuneaton, and Coventry, Evans showed promise as a student,
particularly in the subjects of music and French. After her
mother’s death and her elder sister’s marriage, Evans kept
house for her father, pursuing her own studies in languages,
philosophy, and literature. When her father retired in 1841
to the outskirts of Coventry, Evans joined an important circle
of friends, the Hennells and Brays, freethinkers and journal-
ists who inspired both Evans’s break with the evangelical reli-
gion of her youth and her literary ambitions.
In 1844 she began her first professional work, a translation
of David Friedrich Strauss’s Life of Jesus (1846). After her
father’s death in 1849, which left her with a small legacy, she
travelled to Europe and then settled in London. The
publisher of her Strauss translation, John Chapman, invited
her first to review and then to work as the (unpaid) editor of
the prestigious Westminster Review. From 1852 to 1854 Evans
performed the substantive editorial work of the journal, a
position that gave her an opportunity to meet some of the
most important liberal intellectuals then in London, includ-
ing Herbert Spencer and George Henry Lewes.
In 1854, having put the finishing touches on another
translation, Ludwig Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity, the
88
SILLY NOVELS BY LADY NOVELISTS
(OCTOBER 1856)
George Eliot
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 88
only published work she signed with her own name, she
eloped to Europe with the married Lewes, who was unable
to divorce after having previously condoned his wife’s adul-
tery. Despite the initial scandal and the enduring disap-
proval of Evans’s brother, Evans and Lewes enjoyed a happy
and mutually supportive literary life until Lewes’s death in
1878. During this period she published the books for which
she is renowned: the stories Scenes of Clerical Life (1858) and
the six novels—Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss
(1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1863), Felix Holt, the
Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda
(1876)—that make up the works of “George Eliot.” The
popular and critical acclaim for these novels, masterpieces
of the realist tradition, established her reputation as one of
the most important writers of her age and did much to
efface the scandal of her private life. Two years after Lewes’s
death, her marriage to the much younger John Walter Cross
effected a reconciliation with her family shortly before she
herself died.
Published in the Westminster Review in 1856, shortly before
she began writing her own fiction, “Silly Novels by Lady
Novelists” has many of the hallmarks of what would become
George Eliot’s defining style. Witty and irreverent, the review
essay takes exception to the critical double standard. While
“Silly Novels” is usually read as an indictment of the kind of
fiction Eliot herself would not write, the essay is more ambi-
tious. Eliot intertwines the lack of alternative vocational
options for women with her categories of silly novels, so that
the target of her attack is not merely the vain and untalented
writers themselves, but the society that has presented them
with no other viable—and more appropriate—outlets for
their ambitions. Eliot protests vehemently against chivalrous
criticism that begins with the “extremely false impression that
to write at all is a proof of superiority in a woman.” “Fiction is
a department of literature in which women can, after their
kind, fully equal men,” she concludes, and the best service
silly novels by lady novelists
89
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that can be rendered to fiction and to writers is to judge all
literary efforts by the same exacting standards.
silly novels by lady novelists are a genus with many
species, determined by the particular quality of silliness that predomi-
nates in them—the frothy, the prosy, the pious, or the pedantic. But it is
a mixture of all these—a composite order of feminine fatuity, that
produces the largest class of such novels, which we shall distinguish as
the mind-and-millinery species. The heroine is usually an heiress, proba-
bly a peeress in her own right, with perhaps a vicious baronet, an amiable
duke, and an irresistible younger son of a marquis as lovers in the fore-
ground, a clergyman and a poet sighing for her in the middle distance,
and a crowd of undefined adorers dimly indicated beyond. Her eyes and
her wit are both dazzling; her nose and her morals are alike free from
any tendency to irregularity; she has a superb contralto and a superb intel-
lect; she is perfectly well-dressed and perfectly religious; she dances like
a sylph, and reads the Bible in the original tongues. Or it may be that the
heroine is not an heiress—that rank and wealth are the only things in
which she is deficient; but she infallibly gets into high society, she has the
triumph of refusing many matches and securing the best, and she wears
some family jewels or other as a sort of crown of righteousness at the end.
Rakish men either bite their lips in impotent confusion at her repartees,
or are touched to penitence by her reproofs, which, on appropriate occa-
sions, rise to a lofty strain of rhetoric; indeed, there is a general propen-
sity in her to make speeches, and to rhapsodize at some length when she
retires to her bedroom. In her recorded conversations she is amazingly
eloquent, and in her unrecorded conversations, amazingly witty. She is
understood to have a depth of insight that looks through and through
the shallow theories of philosophers, and her superior instincts are a sort
of dial by which men have only to set their clocks and watches, and all
will go well. The men play a very subordinate part by her side. You are
consoled now and then by a hint that they have affairs,
1
which keeps you
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90
1
Business affairs.
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in mind that the working-day business of the world is somehow being
carried on, but ostensibly the final cause of their existence is that they
may accompany the heroine on her “starring” expedition through life.
They see her at a ball, and are dazzled; at a flower-show, and they are
fascinated; on a riding excursion, and they are witched by her noble
horsemanship; at church, and they are awed by the sweet solemnity of
her demeanour. She is the ideal woman in feelings, faculties, and
flounces. For all this, she as often as not marries the wrong person to
begin with, and she suffers terribly from the plots and intrigues of the
vicious baronet; but even death has a soft place in his heart for such a
paragon, and remedies all mistakes for her just at the right moment. The
vicious baronet is sure to be killed in a duel, and the tedious husband
dies in his bed, requesting his wife, as a particular favour to him, to marry
the man she loves best, and having already dispatched a note to the lover
informing him of the comfortable arrangement. Before matters arrive at
this desirable issue our feelings are tried by seeing the noble, lovely, and
gifted heroine pass through many mauvais moments,
1
but we have the satis-
faction of knowing that her sorrows are wept into embroidered pocket-
handkerchiefs, that her fainting form reclines on the very best upholstery ,
and that whatever vicissitudes she may undergo, from being dashed out
of her carriage to having her head shaved in a fever, she comes out of
them all with a complexion more blooming and locks more redundant
than ever.
We may remark, by the way, that we have been relieved from a seri-
ous scruple by discovering that silly novels by lady novelists rarely intro-
duce us into any other than very lofty and fashionable society. We had
imagined that destitute women turned novelists, as they turned
governesses, because they had no other “lady-like” means of getting their
bread. On this supposition, vacillating syntax and improbable incident
had a certain pathos for us, like the extremely supererogatory pincush-
ions and ill-devised nightcaps that are offered for sale by a blind man.
We felt the commodity to be a nuisance, but we were glad to think that
the money went to relieve the necessitous, and we pictured to ourselves
lonely women struggling for a maintenance, or wives and daughters
silly novels by lady novelists
91
1
Unfortunate circumstances.
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devoting themselves to the production of “copy” out of pure heroism,—
perhaps to pay their husband’s debts, or to purchase luxuries for a sick
father . Under these impressions we shrank from criticizing a lady’s novel:
her English might be faulty, but, we said to ourselves, her motives are
irreproachable; her imagination may be uninventive, but her patience
is untiring. Empty writing was excused by an empty stomach, and twad-
dle was consecrated by tears. But no! This theory of ours, like many
other pretty theories, has had to give way before observation. Women’s
silly novels, we are now convinced, are written under totally different
circumstances. The fair writers have evidently never talked to a trades-
man except from a carriage window; they have no notion of the work-
ing classes except as “dependants”; they think £500 a year a miserable
pittance; Belgravia
1
and “baronial halls” are their primary truths; and
they have no idea of feeling interest in any man who is not at least a great
landed proprietor, if not a prime minister. It is clear that they write in
elegant boudoirs, with violet-coloured ink and a ruby pen; that they must
be entirely indifferent to publishers’ accounts, and inexperienced in
every form of poverty except poverty of brains. It is true that we are
constantly struck with the want of verisimilitude in their representations
of the high society in which they seem to live; but then they betray no
closer acquaintance with any other form of life. If their peers and peer-
esses are improbable, their literary men, tradespeople, and cottagers are
impossible; and their intellect seems to have the peculiar impartiality of
reproducing both what they have seen and heard, and what they have
not seen and heard, with equal unfaithfulness.
There are few women, we suppose, who have not seen something
of children under five years of age, yet in Compensation,
2
a recent
novel of the mind-and-millinery species, which calls itself a “story of
real life,” we have a child of four and a half years old talking in this
Ossianic fashion—
“Oh, I am so happy, dear gran’mamma;—I have seen,—I have
seen such a delightful person: he is like everything beautiful,—
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1
Fashionable section of London.
2
By Henrietta Lascelles, Lady Chatterton (1806–76).
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like the smell of sweet flowers, and the view from Ben Lomond;—
or no, better than that—he is like what I think of and see when I
am very, very happy; and he is really like mamma, too, when she
sings; and his forehead is like that distant sea,” she continued,
pointing to the blue Mediterranean; “there seems no end—no
end; or like the clusters of stars I like best to look at on a warm
fine night ... Don’t look so ... your forehead is like Loch Lomond,
when the wind is blowing and the sun is gone in; I like the
sunshine best when the lake is smooth ... So now—I like it better
than ever ... it is more beautiful still from the dark cloud that has
gone over it, when the sun suddenly lights up all the colours of the forests
and shining purple rocks, and it is all reflected in the waters below.”
We are not surprised to learn that the mother of this infant phenom-
enon, who exhibits symptoms so alarmingly like those of adolescence
repressed by gin, is herself a phoenix. We are assured, again and again,
that she had a remarkably original mind, that she was a genius, and
“conscious of her originality,” and she was fortunate enough to have a
lover who was also a genius, and a man of “most original mind.”
This lover, we read, though “wonderfully similar” to her “in powers
and capacity,” was “infinitely superior to her in faith and develop-
ment,” and she saw in him the “‘Agape’—so rare to find—of which
she had read and admired the meaning in her Greek Testament;
having, from her great facility in learning languages, read the Scriptures
in their original tongues.” Of course! Greek and Hebrew are mere
play to a heroine; Sanscrit is no more than a b c to her; and she can
talk with perfect correctness in any language except English. She is a
polking polyglot, a Creuzer in crinoline.
1
Poor men! There are so few
of you who know even Hebrew; you think it something to boast of if,
like Bolingbroke, you only “understand that sort of learning, and
what is writ about it”;
2
and you are perhaps adoring women who can
think slightingly of you in all the Semitic languages successively. But,
silly novels by lady novelists
93
1
Reference to Georg Friedrich Creuzer (1771–1858), eminent German philologist.
2
Poet Alexander Pope’s (1688–1744) tribute to philosopher Henry Bolingbroke
(1678–1751).
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then, as we are almost invariably told, that a heroine has a “beauti-
fully small head,” and as her intellect has probably been early invig-
orated by an attention to costume and deportment, we may conclude
that she can pick up the Oriental tongues, to say nothing of their
dialects, with the same aerial facility that the butterfly sips nectar.
Besides, there can be no difficulty in conceiving the depth of the
heroine’s erudition, when that of the authoress is so evident.
In Laura Gay,
1
another novel of the same school, the heroine seems
less at home in Greek and Hebrew, but she makes up for the deficiency
by a quite playful familiarity with the Latin classics—with “dear old
Virgil,” “the graceful Horace, the humane Cicero and the pleasant
Livy”;
2
indeed it is such a matter of course with her to quote Latin, that
she does it at a picnic in a very mixed company of ladies and gentle-
men, having, we are told, “no conception that the nobler sex were
capable of jealousy on this subject. And if, indeed,” continues the biog-
rapher of Laura Gay, “the wisest and noblest portion of that sex were
in the majority, no such sentiment would exist; but while Miss
Wyndhams and Mr. Redfords abound, great sacrifices must be made
to their existence.” Such sacrifices, we presume, as abstaining from
Latin quotations, of extremely moderate interest and applicability,
which the wise and noble minority of the other sex would be quite as
willing to dispense with, as the foolish and ignoble majority. It is as
little the custom of well-bred men as of well-bred women to quote
Latin in mixed parties; they can contain their familiarity with “the
humane Cicero” without allowing it to boil over in ordinary conversa-
tion, and even references to “the pleasant Livy” are not absolutely irre-
pressible. But Ciceronian Latin is the mildest form of Miss Gay’s
conversational power. Being on the Palatine with a party of sight-seers,
she falls into the following vein of well-rounded remark:—
Truth can only be pure objectively, for even in the creeds where
it predominates, being subjective, and parceled out into portions,
each of these necessarily receives a hue of idiosyncrasy, that is, a
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94
1
Published anonymously.
2
Standard classical authors.
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taint of superstition more or less strong; while in such creeds as
the Roman Catholic, ignorance, interest, the bias of ancient idol-
atries, and the force of authority, have gradually accumulated on
the pure truth, and transformed it, at last, into a mass of super-
stition for the majority of its votaries; and how few are there, alas!
whose zeal, courage, and intellectual energy are equal to the
analysis of this accumulation, and to the discovery of the pearl of
great price which lies hidden beneath this heap of rubbish.
We have often met with women much more novel and profound in their
observations than Laura Gay, but rarely with any so inopportunely long-
winded. A clerical lord, who is half in love with her, is alarmed by the
daring remarks just quoted, and begins to suspect that she is inclined to
free-thinking. But he is mistaken; when in a moment of sorrow he deli-
cately begs leave to “recall to her memory, a dépôt
1
of strength and conso-
lation under affliction, which, until we are hard pressed by the trials of
life, we are too apt to forget,” we learn that she really has “recurrence to
that sacred dépôt, together with the tea-pot. There is a certain flavour
of orthodoxy mixed with the parade of fortunes and fine carriages in
Laura Gay, but it is an orthodoxy mitigated by study of “the humane
Cicero,” and by an “intellectual disposition to analyse.”
Compensation is much more heavily dosed with doctrine, but then it
has a treble amount of snobbish worldliness and absurd incident to
tickle the palate of pious frivolity. Linda, the heroine, is still more spec-
ulative and spiritual than Laura Gay, but she has been “presented,”
and has more, and far grander, lovers; very wicked and fascinating
women are introduced—even a French lionne;
2
and no expense is
spared to get up as exciting a story as you will find in the most immoral
novels. In fact it is a wonderful pot pourri of Almack’s, Scotch second-
sight, Mr. Rogers’s breakfasts,
3
Italian brigands, death-bed conversions,
superior authoresses, Italian mistresses, and attempts at poisoning old
ladies, the whole served up with a garnish of talk about “faith and
silly novels by lady novelists
95
1
Deposit.
2
Literary lion; a writer who is currently much admired.
3
Almack’s was a fashionable assembly room in London; Samuel Rogers (1763–1855)
hosted literary and society breakfasts.
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development,” and “most original minds.” Even Miss Susan Barton,
the superior authoress, whose pen moves in a “quick decided manner
when she is composing,” declines the finest opportunities of marriage;
and though old enough to be Linda’s mother (since we are told that
she refused Linda’s father), has her hand sought by a young earl, the
heroine’s rejected lover. Of course, genius and morality must be
backed by eligible offers, or they would seem rather a dull affair; and
piety, like other things, in order to be comme il faut,
1
must be in “soci-
ety,” and have admittance to the best circles.
Rank and Beauty
2
is a more frothy and less religious variety of the
mind-and-millinery species. The heroine, we are told, “if she inherited
her father’s pride of birth and her mother’s beauty of person, had in
herself a tone of enthusiastic feeling that perhaps belongs to her age
even in the lowly born, but which is refined into the high spirit of wild
romance only in the far descended, who feel that it is their best inher-
itance.” This enthusiastic young lady, by dint of reading the newspa-
per to her father, falls in love with the prime minister, who, through the
medium of leading articles and “the resumé 
3
of the debates,” shines
upon her imagination as a bright particular star, which has no paral-
lax for her, living in the country as simple Miss Wyndham. But she
forthwith becomes Baroness Umfraville in her own right, astonishes
the world with her beauty and accomplishments when, she bursts
upon it from her mansion in Spring Gardens, and, as you foresee, will
presently come into contact with the unseen objet aimé.
4
Perhaps the
words “prime minister” suggest to you a wrinkled or obese sexagenar-
ian; but pray dismiss the image. Lord Rupert Conway has been “called
while still almost a youth to the first situation which a subject can hold
in the universe,” and even leading articles and a resumé of the debates
have not conjured up a dream that surpasses the fact.
The door opened again, and Lord Rupert Conway entered.
Evelyn gave one glance. It was enough; she was not disappointed.
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96
1
Well-bred.
2
Published anonymously.
3
Summary.
4
Beloved.
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It seemed as if a picture on which she had long gazed was
suddenly instinct with life, and had stepped from its frame
before her. His tall figure, the distinguished simplicity of his
air—it was a living Vandyke,
1
a cavalier, one of his noble cavalier
ancestors, or one to whom her fancy had always likened him,
who long of yore had, with an Umfraville, fought the Paynim far
beyond sea. Was this reality?
Very little like it, certainly.
By and by, it becomes evident that the ministerial heart is touched.
Lady Umfraville is on a visit to the Queen at Windsor, and,—
The last evening of her stay, when they returned from riding, Mr.
Wyndham took her and a large party to the top of the Keep, to
see the view. She was leaning on the battlements, gazing from that
“stately height” at the prospect beneath her, when Lord Rupert
was by her side. “What an unrivalled view!” exclaimed she.
“Yes, it would have been wrong to go without having been up
here. You are pleased with your visit?”
“Enchanted! ‘A Queen to live and die under ,’ to live and die for!”
“Ha!” cried he, with sudden emotion, and with a eureka
expression of countenance, as if he had indeed found a heart in
unison with his own.
The “eureka expression of countenance,” you see at once to be
prophetic of marriage at the end of the third volume; but before that
desirable consummation, there are very complicated misunder-
standings, arising chiefly from the vindictive plotting of Sir Luttrell
Wycherley, who is a genius, a poet, and in every way a most remark-
able character indeed. He is not only a romantic poet, but a hardened
rake and a cynical wit; yet his deep passion for Lady Umfraville has so
impoverished his epigrammatic talent, that he cuts an extremely poor
figure in conversation. When she rejects him, he rushes into the
shrubbery, and rolls himself in the dirt; and on recovering, devotes
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97
1
Portrait by painter Antoon van Dyck (1599–1641).
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himself to the most diabolical and laborious schemes of vengeance,
in the course of which he disguises himself as a quack physician, and
enters into general practice, foreseeing that Evelyn will fall ill, and
that he shall be called in to attend her. At last, when all his schemes
are frustrated, he takes leave of her in a long letter, written, as you will
perceive from the following passage, entirely in the style of an
eminent literary man:—
Oh, lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure, will you ever cast one
thought upon the miserable being who addresses you? Will you
ever, as your gilded galley is floating down the unruffled stream
of prosperity, will you ever, while lulled by the sweetest music—
thine own praises,—hear the far-off sigh from that world to
which I am going?
On the whole, however, frothy as it is, we rather prefer Rank and
Beauty to the two other novels we have mentioned. The dialogue is
more natural and spirited; there is some frank ignorance, and no
pedantry; and you are allowed to take the heroine’s astounding intel-
lect upon trust, without being called on to read her conversational
refutations of sceptics and philosophers, or her rhetorical solutions
of the mysteries of the universe.
Writers of the mind-and-millinery school are remarkably unanimous
in their choice of diction. In their novels, there is usually a lady or
gentleman who is more or less of a upas tree: the lover has a manly
breast; minds are redolent of various things; hearts are hollow; events
are utilized; friends are consigned to the tomb; infancy is an engaging
period; the sun is a luminary that goes to his western couch, or gathers
the rain-drops into his refulgent bosom; life is a melancholy boon;
Albion and Scotia are conversational epithets. There is a striking resem-
blance, too, in the character of their moral comments, such, for
instance, as that “It is a fact, no less true than melancholy, that all
people, more or less, richer or poorer, are swayed by bad example”; that
“Books, however trivial, contain some subjects from which useful infor-
mation may be drawn”; that “Vice can too often borrow the language
of virtue”; that “Merit and nobility of nature must exist, to be accepted,
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98
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for clamour and pretension cannot impose upon those too well read
in human nature to be easily deceived”; and that, “In order to forgive,
we must have been injured.” There is, doubtless, a class of readers to
whom these remarks appear peculiarly pointed and pungent; for we
often find them doubly and trebly scored with the pencil, and delicate
hands giving in their determined adhesion to these hardy novelties by
a distinct très vrai,
1
emphasized by many notes of exclamation. The
colloquial style of these novels is often marked by much ingenious
inversion, and a careful avoidance of such cheap phraseology as can be
heard every day. Angry young gentlemen exclaim—“’Tis ever thus,
methinks”; and in the half hour before dinner a young lady informs
her next neighbour that the first day she read Shakspeare she “stole
away into the park, and beneath the shadow of the greenwood tree,
devoured with rapture the inspired page of the great magician.” But
the most remarkable efforts of the mind-and-millinery writers lie in
their philosophic reflections. The authoress of Laura Gay, for example,
having married her hero and heroine, improves the event by observ-
ing that “if those sceptics, whose eyes have so long gazed on matter that
they can no longer see aught else in man, could once enter with the
heart and soul into such bliss as this, they would come to say that the
soul of man and the polypus
2
are not of common origin, or of the same
texture.” Lady novelists, it appears, can see something else besides
matter; they are not limited to phenomena, but can relieve their
eyesight by occasional glimpses of the noumenon,
3
and are, therefore,
naturally better able than any one else to confound sceptics, even of
that remarkable, but to us unknown school, which maintains that the
soul of man is of the same texture as the polypus.
The most pitiable of all silly novels by lady novelists are what we may
call the oracular species—novels intended to expound the writer’s reli-
gious, philosophical, or moral theories. There seems to be a notion
abroad among women, rather akin to the superstition that the speech
and actions of idiots are inspired, and that the human being most
silly novels by lady novelists
99
1
Very true.
2
Octopus.
3
Philosophical concept; an object that exists independently of perception by the senses.
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entirely exhausted of common sense is the fittest vehicle of revelation.
To judge from their writings, there are certain ladies who think that
an amazing ignorance, both of science and of life, is the best possible
qualification for forming an opinion on the knottiest moral and spec-
ulative questions. Apparently, their recipe for solving all such difficul-
ties is something like this:—Take a woman’s head, stuff it with a
smattering of philosophy and literature chopped small, and with false
notions of society baked hard, let it hang over a desk a few hours every
day and serve up hot in feeble English, when not required. You will
rarely meet with a lady novelist of the oracular class who is diffident of
her ability to decide on theological questions,—who has any suspicion
that she is not capable of discriminating with the nicest accuracy
between the good and evil in all church parties,—who does not see
precisely how it is that men have gone wrong hitherto,—and pity
philosophers in general that they have not had the opportunity of
consulting her. Great writers, who have modestly contented themselves
with putting their experience into fiction, and have thought it quite a
sufficient task to exhibit men and things as they are, she sighs over as
deplorably deficient in the application of their powers. “They have
solved no great questions”—and she is ready to remedy their omission
by setting before you a complete theory of life and manual of divinity,
in a love story, where ladies and gentlemen of good family go through
genteel vicissitudes, to the utter confusion of Deists, Puseyites, and
ultra-Protestants,
1
and to the perfect establishment of that particular
view of Christianity which either condenses itself into a sentence of
small caps, or explodes into a cluster of stars on the three hundred
and thirtieth page. It is true, the ladies and gentlemen will probably
seem to you remarkably little like any you have had the fortune or
misfortune to meet with, for, as a general rule, the ability of a lady
novelist to describe actual life and her fellow-men, is in inverse propor-
tion to her confident eloquence about God and the other world, and
the means by which she usually chooses to conduct you to true ideas
of the invisible is a totally false picture of the visible.
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100
1
Different religious sects. Edward Pusey (1800–82) was a leader of the Oxford Movement.
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As typical a novel of the oracular kind as we can hope to meet with,
is The Enigma: A Leaf from the Chronicles of Wolchorley House.
1
The
“enigma” which this novel is to solve, is certainly one that demands
powers no less gigantic than those of a lady novelist, being neither more
nor less than the existence of evil. The problem is stated, and the
answer dimly foreshadowed on the very first page. The spirited young
lady, with raven hair, says, “All life is an inextricable confusion”; and the
meek young lady, with auburn hair, looks at the picture of the Madonna
which she is copying, and—“There seemed the solution of that mighty
enigma.” The style of this novel is quite as lofty as its purpose; indeed,
some passages on which we have spent much patient study are quite
beyond our reach, in spite of the illustrative aid of italics and small caps;
and we must await further “development” in order to understand them.
Of Ernest, the model young clergyman, who sets every one right on all
occasions, we read, that “he held not of marriage in the marketable
kind, after a social desecration”; that, on one eventful night, “sleep had
not visited his divided heart, where tumultuated, in varied type and
combination, the aggregate feelings of grief and joy”; and that, “for the
marketable human article he had no toleration, be it of what sort, or set
for what value it might, whether for worship or class, his upright soul
abhorred it, whose ultimatum, the self-deceiver, was to him THE great
spiritual lie, ‘living in a vain show, deceiving and being deceived’; since
he did not suppose the phylactery and enlarged border on the garment
to be merely a social trick.” (The italics and small caps are the author’s,
and we hope they assist the reader’s comprehension.) Of Sir Lionel,
the model old gentleman, we are told that “the simple ideal of the
middle age, apart from its anarchy and decadence, in him most truly
seemed to live again, when the ties which knit men together were of
heroic cast. The first-born colours of pristine faith and truth engraven
on the common soul of man, and blent into the wide arch of brother-
hood, where the primaeval law of order grew and multiplied, each
perfect after his kind, and mutually independent.” You see clearly, of
course, how colours are first engraven on a soul, and then blent into a
wide arch, on which arch of colours—apparently a rainbow—the law
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101
1
Published anonymously.
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of order grew and multiplied, each—apparently the arch and the law—
perfect after his kind? If, after this, you can possibly want any further
aid towards knowing what Sir Lionel was, we can tell you, that in his
soul “the scientific combinations of thought could educe no fuller
harmonies of the good and the true, than lay in the primaeval pulses
which floated as an atmosphere around it!” and that, when he was seal-
ing a letter, “Lo! the responsive throb in that good man’s bosom echoed
back in simple truth the honest witness of a heart that condemned him
not, as his eye, bedewed with love, rested, too, with something of ances-
tral pride, on the undimmed motto of the family —LOIAUTÉ.”
1
The slightest matters have their vulgarity fumigated out of them by
the same elevated style. Commonplace people would say that a copy
of Shakspeare lay on a drawing-room table; but the authoress of The
Enigma, bent on edifying periphrasis, tells you that there lay on the
table, “that fund of human thought and feeling, which teaches the
heart through the little name, ‘Shakspeare.’” A watchman sees a light
burning in an upper window rather longer than usual, and thinks that
people are foolish to sit up late when they have an opportunity of
going to bed; but, lest this fact should seem too low and common, it
is presented to us in the following striking and metaphysical manner:
“He marvelled—as man will think for others in a necessarily separate
personality, consequently (though disallowing it) in false mental prem-
ise,—how differently he should act, how gladly he should prize the rest
so lightly held of within.” A footman—an ordinary Jeames, with large
calves and aspirated vowels—answers the door-bell, and the opportu-
nity is seized to tell you that he was a “type of the large class of
pampered menials, who follow the curse of Cain—‘vagabonds’ on the
face of the earth, and whose estimate of the human class varies in the
graduated scale of money and expenditure ... These, and such as these,
O England, be the false lights of thy morbid civilization!” We have
heard of various “false lights,” from Dr. Cumming to Robert Owen,
from Dr. Pusey to the Spirit-rappers,
2
but we never before heard of the
false light that emanates from plush and powder.
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102
1
Loyalty.
2
Theorists of different religious views. Dr. John Cumming (1807–81), leader in the
Scottish National Church; Robert Owen (1771–1858), Welsh early socialist thinker.
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In the same way very ordinary events of civilized life are exalted
into the most awful crises, and ladies in full skirts and manches à la
chinoise,
1
conduct themselves not unlike the heroines of sanguinary
melodramas. Mrs. Percy, a shallow woman of the world, wishes her
son Horace to marry the auburn-haired Grace, she being an heiress;
but he, after the manner of sons, falls in love with the raven-haired
Kate, the heiress’s portionless cousin; and, moreover, Grace herself
shows every symptom of perfect indifference to Horace. In such cases,
sons are often sulky or fiery, mothers are alternately manoeuvering
and waspish, and the portionless young lady often lies awake at night
and cries a good deal. We are getting used to these things now, just as
we are used to eclipses of the moon, which no longer set us howling
and beating tin kettles. We never heard of a lady in a fashionable
“front”
2
behaving like Mrs. Percy under these circumstances.
Happening one day to see Horace talking to Grace at a window, with-
out in the least knowing what they are talking about, or having the
least reason to believe that Grace, who is mistress of the house and a
person of dignity, would accept her son if he were to offer himself,
she suddenly rushes up to them and clasps them both, saying, “with
a flushed countenance and in an excited manner”—“This is indeed
happiness; for, may I not call you so, Grace?—my Grace—my
Horace’s Grace!—my dear children!” Her son tells her she is
mistaken, and that he is engaged to Kate, whereupon we have the
following scene and tableau:—
Gathering herself up to an unprecedented height,(!) her eyes
lightning forth the fire of her anger:—
“Wretched boy!” she said, hoarsely and scornfully, and clench-
ing her hand. “Take then the doom of your own choice! Bow
down your miserable head and let a mother’s—”
“Curse not!” spake a deep low voice from behind, and Mrs.
Percy started, scared, as though she had seen a heavenly visitant
appear, to break upon her in the midst of her sin.
silly novels by lady novelists
103
1
Broad, full sleeves, in a Chinese style.
2
Hair style.
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Meantime, Horace had fallen on his knees at her feet, and hid
his face in his hands.
Who, then, is she—who! Truly his “guardian spirit” has
stepped between him and the fearful words, which, however
unmerited, must have hung as a pall over his future existence; a
spell which could not be unbound—which could not be unsaid.
Of an earthly paleness, but calm with the still, iron-bound
calmness of death—the only calm one there,—Katherine stood;
and her words smote on the ear in tones whose appallingly slow
and separate intonation rung on the heart like the chill, isolated
tolling of some fatal knell.
“He would have plighted me his faith, but I did not accept it;
you cannot, therefore—you dare not curse him. And here,” she
continued, raising her hand to heaven, whither her large dark
eyes also rose with a chastened glow, which, for the first time
suffering had lighted in those passionate orbs,—“here I promise,
come weal, come woe, that Horace Wolchorley and I do never
interchange vows without his mother’s sanction—without his
mother’s blessing!”
Here, and throughout the story, we see that confusion of purpose which
is so characteristic of silly novels written by women. It is a story of quite
modern drawing-room society—a society in which polkas are played and
Puseyism discussed; yet we have characters and incidents, and traits of
manner introduced, which are mere shreds from the most heteroge-
neous romances. We have a blind Irish harper “relic of the picturesque
bards of yore,” startling us at a Sunday-school festival of tea and cake in
an English village; we have a crazy gypsy, in a scarlet cloak, singing
snatches of romantic song, and revealing a secret on her death-bed
which, with the testimony of a dwarfish miserly merchant, who salutes
strangers with a curse and a devilish laugh, goes to prove that Ernest, the
model young clergyman, is Kate’s brother; and we have an ultra-virtuous
Irish Barney, discovering that a document is forged, by comparing the
date of the paper with the date of the alleged signature, although the
same document has passed through a court of law, and occasioned a fatal
decision. The “Hall” in which Sir Lionel lives is the venerable country-
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104
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seat of an old family, and this, we suppose, sets the imagination of the
authoress flying to donjons and battlements, where “lo! the warder blows
his horn”; for, as the inhabitants are in their bedrooms on a night
certainly within the recollection of Pleaceman X., and a breeze springs
up, which we are at first told was faint, and then that it made the old
cedars bow their branches to the greensward, she falls in to this mediae-
val vein of description (the italics are ours): “The banner unfurled it at the
sound, and shook its guardian wing above, while the startled owl flapped
her in the ivy; the firmament looking down through her ‘argus eyes’—
Ministers of heaven’s mute melodies.
And lo! two strokes tolled out the warder tower, and ‘Two o’clock’ re-
echoed its interpreter below.”
Such stories as this of The Enigma remind us of the pictures clever chil-
dren sometimes draw “out of their own head,” where you will see a
modern villa on the right, two knights in helmets fighting in the fore-
ground, and a tiger grinning in a jungle on the left, the several objects
being brought together because the artist thinks each pretty, and
perhaps still more because he remembers seeing them in other pictures.
But we like the authoress much better on her mediaeval stilts than
on her oracular ones,—when she talks of the Ich and of “subjective” and
“objective,” and lays down the exact line of Christian verity, between
“right-hand excesses and left-hand declensions.”
1
Persons who deviate
from this line are introduced with a patronizing air of charity. Of a
certain Miss Inshquine she informs us, with all the lucidity of italics and
small caps, that “function, not form, as THE INEVITABLE OUTER EXPRESSION OF
THE SPIRIT IN THIS TABERNACLED AGE, weakly engrossed her.” And à propos of
Miss Mayjar, an evangelical lady who is a little too apt to talk of her visits
to sick women and the state of their souls, we are told that the model
clergyman is “not one to disallow, through the super crust, the under-
current towards good in the subject, or the positive benefits, neverthe-
less, to the object.” We imagine the double-refined accent and protrusion
of chin which are feebly represented by the italics in this lady’s
silly novels by lady novelists
105
1
Terms from contemporary German philosophy.
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sentences. We abstain from quoting any of her oracular doctrinal
passages, because they refer to matters too serious for our pages just now.
The epithet “silly” may seem impertinent, applied to a novel which
indicates so much reading and intellectual activity as The Enigma; but
we use this epithet advisedly. If, as the world has long agreed, a very
great amount of instruction will not make a wise man, still less will a
very mediocre amount of instruction make a wise woman. And the
most mischievous form of feminine silliness is the literary form,
because it tends to confirm the popular prejudice against the more
solid education of women. When men see girls wasting their time in
consultations about bonnets and ball dresses, and in giggling or senti-
mental love-confidences, or middle-aged women mismanaging their
children, and solacing themselves with acrid gossip, they can hardly
help saying, “For Heaven’s sake, let girls be better educated; let them
have some better objects of thought—some more solid occupations.”
But after a few hours’ conversation with an oracular literary woman,
or a few hours’ reading of her books, they are likely enough to say,
“After all, when a woman gets some knowledge, see what use she
makes of it! Her knowledge remains acquisition, instead of passing
into culture; instead of being subdued into modesty and simplicity by
a larger acquaintance with thought and fact, she has a feverish
consciousness of her attainments; she keeps a sort of mental pocket-
mirror, and is continually looking in it at her own ‘intellectuality’; she
spoils the taste of one’s muffin by questions of metaphysics; ‘puts
down’ men at a dinner-table with her superior information; and seizes
the opportunity of a soirée to catechize us on the vital question of the
relation between mind and matter. And then, look at her writings!
She mistakes vagueness for depth, bombast for eloquence, and affec-
tation for originality; she struts on one page, rolls her eyes on another,
grimaces in a third, and is hysterical in a fourth. She may have read
many writings of great men, and a few writings of great women; but
she is as unable to discern the difference between her own style and
theirs as a Yorkshireman is to discern the difference between his own
English and a Londoner’s: rhodomontade is the native accent of her
intellect. No—the average nature of women is too shallow and feeble
a soil to bear much tillage; it is only fit for the very lightest crops.”
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106
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It is true that the men who come to such a decision on such very
superficial and imperfect observation may not be among the wisest in
the world; but we have not now to contest their opinion—we are only
pointing out how it is unconsciously encouraged by many women who
have volunteered themselves as representatives of the feminine intel-
lect. We do not believe that a man was ever strengthened in such an
opinion by associating with a woman of true culture, whose mind had
absorbed her knowledge instead of being absorbed by it. A really
cultured woman, like a really cultured man, is all the simpler and less
obtrusive for her knowledge; it has made her see herself and her opin-
ions in something like just proportions; she does not make it a pedestal
from which she flatters herself that she commands a complete view of
men and things, but makes it a point of observation from which to form
a right estimate of herself. She neither spouts poetry nor quotes Cicero
on slight provocation; not because she thinks that a sacrifice must be
made to the prejudices of men, but because that mode of exhibiting
her memory and Latinity does not present itself to her as edifying or
graceful. She does not write books to confound philosophers, perhaps
because she is able to write books that delight them. In conversation
she is the least formidable of women, because she understands you,
without wanting to make you aware that you can’t understand her. She
does not give you information, which is the raw material of culture,—
she gives you sympathy, which is its subtlest essence.
A more numerous class of silly novels than the oracular (which are
generally inspired by some form of High Church, or transcendental
Christianity), is what we may call the white neck-cloth species, which repre-
sent the tone of thought and feeling in the Evangelical party. This
species is a kind of genteel tract on a large scale, intended as a sort of
medicinal sweetmeat for Low Church young ladies; an Evangelical
substitute for the fashionable novel, as the May Meetings
1
are a substi-
tute for the Opera. Even Quaker children, one would think, can hardly
have been denied the indulgence of a doll; but it must be a doll dressed
in a drab gown and a coal-scuttle bonnet—not a worldly doll, in gauze
and spangles. And there are no young ladies, we imagine,—unless they
silly novels by lady novelists
107
1
Missionary Society’s annual meetings in London.
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belong to the Church of the United Brethren,
1
in which people are
married without any love-making—who can dispense with love stories.
Thus, for Evangelical young ladies there are Evangelical love stories, in
which the vicissitudes of the tender passion are sanctified by saving views
of Regeneration and the Atonement. These novels differ from the orac-
ular ones, as a Low Churchwoman often differs from a High
Churchwoman: they are a little less supercilious, and a great deal more
ignorant, a little less correct in their syntax, and a great deal more vulgar .
The Orlando
2
of Evangelical literature is the young curate, looked
at from the point of view of the middle class, where cambric bands
are understood to have as thrilling an effect on the hearts of young
ladies as epaulettes have in the classes above and below it. In the ordi-
nary type of these novels, the hero is almost sure to be a young curate,
frowned upon, perhaps, by worldly mammas, but carrying captive the
hearts of their daughters, who can “never forget that sermon”; tender
glances are seized from the pulpit stairs instead of the opera-box; tête-
à-têtes are seasoned with quotations from Scripture, instead of quota-
tions from the poets; and questions as to the state of the heroine’s
affections are mingled with anxieties as to the state of her soul. The
young curate always has a background of well-dressed and wealthy, if
not fashionable society;—for Evangelical silliness is as snobbish as any
other kind of silliness; and the Evangelical lady novelist, while she
explains to you the type of the scapegoat on one page, is ambitious
on another to represent the manners and conversation of aristocratic
people. Her pictures of fashionable society are often curious studies
considered as efforts of the Evangelical imagination; but in one partic-
ular the novels of the White Neck-cloth School are meritoriously real-
istic,—their favourite hero, the Evangelical young curate, is always
rather an insipid personage.
The most recent novel of this species that we happen to have
before us, is The Old Grey Church.
3
It is utterly tame and feeble; there
is no one set of objects on which the writer seems to have a stronger
a serious occupation
108
1
Protestant sect.
2
Hero.
3
By Lady Caroline Lucy Scott (1784–1857).
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grasp than on any other; and we should be entirely at a loss to conjec-
ture among what phases of life her experience has been gained, but
for certain vulgarisms of style which sufficiently indicate that she has
had the advantage, though she has been unable to use it, of mingling
chiefly with men and women whose manners and characters have not
had all their bosses and angles rubbed down by refined convention-
alism. It is less excusable in an Evangelical novelist, than in any other,
gratuitously to seek her subjects among titles and carriages. The real
drama of Evangelicalism—and it has abundance of fine drama for any
one who has genius enough to discern and reproduce it—lies among
the middle and lower classes; and are not Evangelical opinions under-
stood to give an especial interest in the weak things of the earth,
rather than in the mighty? Why then, cannot our Evangelical lady
novelists show us the operation of their religious views among people
(there really are many such in the world) who keep no carriage, “not
so much as a brass-bound gig,” who even manage to eat their dinner
without a silver fork, and in whose mouths the authoress’s question-
able English would be strictly consistent? Why can we not have
pictures of religious life among the industrial classes in England, as
interesting as Mrs. Stowe’s pictures of religious life among the
negroes?
1
Instead of this, pious ladies nauseate us with novels which
remind us of what we sometimes see in a worldly woman recently
“converted”;—she is as fond of a fine dinner table as before, but she
invites clergymen instead of beaux; she thinks as much of her dress
as before, but she adopts a more sober choice of colours and patterns;
her conversation is as trivial as before, but the triviality is flavoured
with Gospel instead of gossip. In The Old Grey Church, we have the
same sort of Evangelical travesty of the fashionable novel, and of
course the vicious, intriguing baronet is not wanting. It is worth while
to give a sample of the style of conversation attributed to this high-
born rake—a style that in its profuse italics and palpable innuendoes,
is worthy of Miss Squeers.
2
In an evening visit to the ruins of the
silly novels by lady novelists
109
1
Reference to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s (1811–96) novel Dred, which Eliot reviewed in
the same issue of the Westminster Review.
2
Character in Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby.
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Colosseum, Eustace, the young clergyman, has been withdrawing the
heroine, Miss Lushington, from the rest of the party, for the sake of
a tête-à-tête. The baronet is jealous, and vents his pique in this way:—
There they are, and Miss Lushington, no doubt, quite safe; for
she is under the holy guidance of Pope Eustace the First, who
has, of course, been delivering to her an edifying homily on the
wickedness of the heathens of yore, who, as tradition tells us, in
this very place let loose the wild beasties on poor Saint Paul!—Oh,
no! by the bye, I believe I am wrong, and betraying my want of
clergy, and that it was not at all Saint Paul, nor was it here. But
no matter, it would equally serve as a text to preach from, and
from which to diverge to the degenerate heathen Christians of the
present day, and all their naughty practices, and so end with an
exhortation to “come out from among them, and be sepa-
rate”;—and I am sure, Miss Lushington, you have most scrupu-
lously conformed to that injunction this evening, for we have
seen nothing of you since our arrival. But every one seems
agreed it has been a charming party of pleasure, and I am sure we
all feel much indebted to Mr. Grey for having suggested it; and as he
seems so capital a cicerone, I hope he will think of something
else equally agreeable to all.
This drivelling kind of dialogue, and equally drivelling narrative,
which, like a bad drawing, represents nothing, and barely indicates
what is meant to be represented, runs through the book; and we have
no doubt is considered by the amiable authoress to constitute an
improving novel, which Christian mothers will do well to put into the
hands of their daughters. But everything is relative; we have met with
American vegetarians whose normal diet was dry meal, and who,
when their appetite wanted stimulating, tickled it with wet meal; and
so, we can imagine that there are Evangelical circles in which The Old
Grey Church is devoured as a powerful and interesting fiction.
But, perhaps, the least readable of silly women’s novels, are the
modern-antique species, which unfold to us the domestic life of Jannes
and Jambres, the private love affairs of Sennacherib, or the mental
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110
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struggles and ultimate conversion of Demetrius the silversmith.
1
From most silly novels we can at least extract a laugh; but those of the
modern-antique school have a ponderous, a leaden kind of fatuity,
under which we groan. What can be more demonstrative of the inabil-
ity of literary women to measure their own powers, than their
frequent assumption of a task which can only be justified by the rarest
concurrence of acquirement with genius? The finest effort to reani-
mate the past is of course only approximative—is always more or less
an infusion of the modern spirit into the ancient form,—
Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten heisst,
Das ist im Grund der Herren eigner Geist,
In dem die Zeiten sich bespiegeln.
2
Admitting that genius which has familiarized itself with all the relics
of an ancient period can sometimes, by the force of its sympathetic
divination, restore the missing notes in the “music of humanity,” and
reconstruct the fragments into a whole which will really bring the
remote past nearer to us, and interpret it to our duller apprehen-
sion,—this form of imaginative power must always be among the very
rarest, because it demands as much accurate and minute knowledge
as creative vigour. Yet we find ladies constantly choosing to make their
mental mediocrity more conspicuous, by clothing it in a masquerade
of ancient names; by putting their feeble sentimentality into the
mouths of Roman vestals or Egyptian princesses, and attributing their
rhetorical arguments to Jewish high-priests and Greek philosophers.
A recent example of this heavy imbecility is Adonijah, a T ale of the Jewish
Dispersion,
3
which forms part of a series, “uniting,” we are told, “taste,
humour, and sound principles.” Adonijah, we presume exemplifies the
tale of “sound principles”; the taste and humour are to be found in
silly novels by lady novelists
111
1
Jannes and Jambres were magicians in ancient Egypt (see 2 Timothy 3:8); Sennacherib
(705–681 BC) was king of Assyria; Demetrius appears in Acts 19.
2
Lines from German poet and dramatist Johann von Goethe’s (1749–1832) Faust: “What
you call the ‘Spirit of the Age’ is really the critic’s spirit, in whose pages the times are
reflected.”
3
By Jane Margaret Stickland (1800–88).
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other members of the series. We are told on the cover, that the inci-
dents of this tale are “fraught with unusual interest,” and the preface
winds up thus: “To those who feel interested in the dispersed of Israel
and Judea, these pages may afford, perhaps, information on an impor-
tant subject, as well as amusement.” Since the “important subject” on
which this book is to afford information is not specified, it may possi-
bly lie in some esoteric meaning to which we have no key; but if it has
relation to the dispersed of Israel and Judea at any period of their
history, we believe a tolerably well-informed school-girl already knows
much more of it than she will find in this “Tale of the Jewish
Dispersion.” Adonijah is simply the feeblest kind of love story, supposed
to be instructive, we presume, because the hero is a Jewish captive, and
the heroine a Roman vestal; because they and their friends are
converted to Christianity after the shortest and easiest method
approved by the “Society for Promoting the Conversion of the Jews”;
and because, instead of being written in plain language, it is adorned
with that peculiar style of grandiloquence which is held by some lady
novelists to give an antique colouring; and which we recognize at once
in such phrases as these:—“the splendid regnal talents undoubtedly
possessed by the Emperor Nero”—“the expiring scion of a lofty
stem”—“the virtuous partner of his couch”—“ah, by Vesta!”—and “I
tell thee, Roman.” Among the quotations which serve at once for
instruction and ornament on the cover of this volume, there is one
from Miss Sinclair,
1
which informs us that “Works of imagination are
avowedly read by men of science, wisdom, and piety”; from which we
suppose the reader is to gather the cheering influence that Dr.
Daubeny, Mr. Mill, or Mr. Maurice,
2
may openly indulge himself with
the perusal of Adonijah, without being obliged to secrete it among the
sofa cushions, or read it by snatches under the dinner-table.
“Be not a baker if your head be made of butter,” says a homely
proverb, which, being interpreted, may mean, let no woman rush into
print who is not prepared for the consequences. We are aware that
a serious occupation
112
1
Catherine Sinclair (1800–64), Scottish novelist.
2
Charles Giles Daubeny (1795–1867), chemist; J.S. Mill (1800–73), philosopher; F.D.
Maurice (1805–72), theologian.
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our remarks are in a very different tone from that of the reviewers
who, with a perennial recurrence of precisely similar emotions, only
paralleled, we imagine, in the experience of monthly nurses, tell one
lady novelist after another that they “hail” her productions “with
delight.” We are aware that the ladies at whom our criticism is pointed
are accustomed to be told, in the choicest phraseology of puffery, that
their pictures of life are brilliant, their characters well-drawn, their
style fascinating, and their sentiments lofty. But if they are inclined to
resent our plainness of speech, we ask them to reflect for a moment
on the chary praise, and often captious blame, which their panegyrists
give to writers whose works are on the way to become classics. No
sooner does a woman show that she has genius or effective talent,
than she receives the tribute of being moderately praised and severely
criticized. By a peculiar thermometric adjustment, when a woman’s
talent is at zero, journalistic approbation is at the boiling pitch; when
she attains mediocrity, it is already at no more than summer heat; and
if ever she reaches excellence, critical enthusiasm drops to the freez-
ing point. Harriet Martineau, Currer Bell, and Mrs. Gaskell have been
treated as cavalierly as if they had been men. And every critic who
forms a high estimate of the share women may ultimately take in liter-
ature, will, on principle, abstain from any exceptional indulgence
towards the productions of literary women. For it must be plain to
every one who looks impartially and extensively into feminine litera-
ture, that its greatest deficiencies are due hardly more to the want of
intellectual power than to the want of those moral qualities that
contribute to literary excellence—patient diligence, a sense of the
responsibility involved in publication, and an appreciation of the
sacredness of the writer’s art. In the majority of women’s books you
see that kind of facility which springs from the absence of any high
standard; that fertility in imbecile combination or feeble imitation
which a little self-criticism would check and reduce to barrenness; just
as with a total want of musical ear people will sing out of tune, while
a degree more melodic sensibility would suffice to render them silent.
The foolish vanity of wishing to appear in print, instead of being
counterbalanced by any consciousness of the intellectual or moral
derogation implied in futile authorship seems to be encouraged by
silly novels by lady novelists
113
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the extremely false impression that to write at all is a proof of superi-
ority in a woman. On this ground, we believe that the average intel-
lect of women is unfairly represented by the mass of feminine
literature, and that while the few women who write well are very far
above the ordinary intellectual level of their sex, the many women
who write ill are very far below it. So that, after all, the severer critics
are fulfilling a chivalrous duty in depriving the mere fact of feminine
authorship of any false prestige which may give it a delusive attrac-
tion, and in recommending women of mediocre faculties—as at least
a negative service they can render their sex—to abstain from writing.
The standing apology for women who become writers without any
special qualification is, that society shuts them out from other spheres
of occupation. Society is a very culpable entity, and has to answer for
the manufacture of many unwholesome commodities, from bad pick-
les to bad poetry. But society, like “matter,” and Her Majesty’s
Government, and other lofty abstractions, has its share of excessive
blame as well as excessive praise. Where there is one woman who
writes from necessity, we believe there are three who write from vanity;
and, besides there is something so antiseptic in the mere healthy fact
of working for one’s bread, that the most trashy and rotten kind of
feminine literature is not likely to have been produced under such
circumstances. “In all labour there is profit”;
1
but ladies’ silly novels,
we imagine, are less the result of labour than of busy idleness.
Happily, we are not dependent on argument to prove that Fiction
is a department of literature in which women can, after their kind,
fully equal men. A cluster of great names, both living and dead, rush
to our memories in evidence that women can produce novels not only
fine, but among the very finest;—novels, too, that have a precious
speciality, lying quite apart from masculine aptitudes and experience.
No educational restrictions can shut women out from the materials
of fiction, and there is no species of art which is so free from rigid
requirements. Like crystalline masses, it make take any form, and yet
be beautiful; we have only to pour in the right elements—genuine
observation, humour, and passion. But it is precisely this absence of
a serious occupation
114
1
See Proverbs 14:23.
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rigid requirement which constitutes the fatal seduction of novel-writ-
ing to incompetent women. Ladies are not wont to be very grossly
deceived as to their power of playing on the piano; here certain posi-
tive difficulties of execution have to be conquered, and incompetence
inevitably breaks down. Every art which has its absolute technique is, to
a certain extent, guarded from the intrusions of mere left-handed
imbecility. But in novel-writing there are no barriers for incapacity to
stumble against, no external criteria to prevent a writer from mistak-
ing foolish facility for mastery. And so we have again and again the
old story of La Fontaine’s ass, who puts his nose to the flute, and, find-
ing that he elicits some sound, exclaims, “Moi, aussi, je joue de la
flute”;
1
—a fable which we commend, at parting, to the consideration
of any feminine reader who is in danger of adding to the number of
“silly novels by lady novelists.”
SOURCE
Westminster Review 66 (October 1856).
SELECTED SECONDARY READING
Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot: A Life. New York: Penguin, 1997.
Haight, Gordon. George Eliot: A Biography. New York: Penguin, 1968.
Rush, Susan Rowland. George Eliot and the Conventions of Popular
Women’s Fiction: A Serious Literary Response to the “Silly Novels by Lady
Novelists.” New York: Peter Lang, 1993.
silly novels by lady novelists
115
1
“I, too, am playing the flute!” This story does not actually appear in the Fables of Jean de
la Fontaine (1621–95).
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dinah mulock (1826–87) was born in Stoke-on-Trent,
the eldest child of a rather unstable Irish dissenting minister
and a schoolteacher. After Mulock’s father lost his chapel, the
family moved first to Newcastle under Lyme and eventually to
London, where Mulock’s parents separated. As a young girl,
Dinah helped her mother teach school, and after her mother’s
death in 1845, she supported herself and her younger broth-
ers by writing, publishing fiction, poetry, and essays in a variety
of popular periodicals, including Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal,
Fraser’s, Macmillan’s, Household Words, Good Words, and the
Cornhill Magazine. Her first three novels were fairly well
received, but it was her fourth, John Halifax, Gentleman (1856),
which established both her popular and critical reputations.
In 1865, Mulock married a somewhat younger man,
George Lillie Craik, who was then an editor for, and later a
partner in, Macmillan’s. The couple adopted a daughter from
a parish workhouse in 1869. Both partners continued their
literary work throughout their marriage. When Mulock died
of sudden heart failure in 1887, her standing was such that
her memorial was planned by such luminaries as Tennyson,
Browning, Matthew Arnold, and Millais.
Mulock’s fiction is frequently concerned with the struggles
of individuals against the rigidities of Victorian society. In John
Halifax, an orphan rises from tanner’s apprentice to become
proprietor of his own business and to see his daughter
116
TO NOVELISTS—AND A NOVELIST
(APRIL 1861)
Dinah Mulock Craik
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courted by an aristocrat; in Olive (1850), an orphan supports
herself and her half-sister by painting and eventually marries
happily; in A Life for a Life (1859), the narrative follows the
efforts of a murderer and a fallen woman to redeem them-
selves; in her children’s tale The Little Lame Prince (1875), the
young prince overcomes loneliness and disability to become
a much-loved, successful king. Similar ideals are upheld in
Mulock’s essays, notably A Woman’s Thoughts about Women
(1858), which encourages women of all classes and condi-
tions to work together and mutually support one another.
Given her propensity to show earnest young people over-
coming adversity and finding happiness, it is no wonder
Mulock protested against the ending of George Eliot’s The
Mill on the Floss (1861), despite her great admiration for Eliot’s
talent as a novelist. The Mill on the Floss, she declares, “is as
perfect as the novel can well be made” and even “one of the
finest imaginative works in our language.” However, Mulock
maintains that because novelists exert an influence over read-
ers that persists “long after we have come to that age, if we ever
reach it, which all good angels forbid! when we ‘don’t read
novels,’” it behooves them to offer uplifting fare. And when
she asks whether the story of The Mill on the Floss “will lighten
any burdened heart, help any perplexed spirit, comfort the
sorrowful, succour the tempted, or bring back the erring into
the way of peace”—and particularly whether it will inspire any
of “the hundreds of clever girls” to persevere in the face of
difficulties and setbacks—Mulock sadly has to answer “No.”
To justify the ways of God to men.—Milton
1
the history of a human life is a strange thing. It is also
a somewhat serious thing—to the individual: who often feels himself,
to novelists—and a novelist
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1
Line from the opening of Milton’s Paradise Lost.
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or appears to others, not unlike the elder-pith figure of an electrical
experimentor—vibrating ridiculously and helplessly between influ-
ences alike invisible and incomprehensible. What is Life—and what
is the heart of its mystery? We know not; and through Death only can
we learn. Nevertheless, nothing but the blindest obtuseness of
bigotry, the maddest indifference of epicureanism—two states not so
opposite as they at first seem—can stifle those
Obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings,
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized.
1
And continually in our passage through these “worlds not realized”—
either the world of passion, or intellect, or beauty—do we lift up our
heads from the chaos, straining our eyes to discern, if possible, where
we are, why we are there, what we are doing, or what is being done
with us, and by whom. Then if we think we have caught even the fag
end of a truth or a belief, how eagerly do we sit down and write about
it, or mount pulpits and preach about it, or get on a platform and
harangue about it! We feel so sure that we have something to say;
something which it must benefit the world to hear. Harmless delu-
sion! Yet not ignoble, for it is a form of that eternal aspiration after
perfect good, without which the whole fabric of existence, mortal and
immortal, natural and supernatural, slides from us, and there remains
nothing worth living for, nothing worth dying for; since the smallest
animalcule in a drop of water—the meanest created organism which
boasts the principle of life—is as noble a being as we.
Now there is something in us which will not “say Amen to that.” We
will not die—and die for ever: we will not while any good remains in
us, cease to believe in a God, who is all we know or can conceive of
goodness made perfect. As utterly as we refuse to regard Him as a
mere Spirit of Nature, unto whom our individuality is indifferent and
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1
Lines from Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality.”
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unknown, do we refuse to see in Him a Being omniscient as omnipo-
tent, who puts us into this awful world without our volition, leaves us
to struggle through it as we can, and, if we fail, finally to drop out of it
into hell-fire or annihilation. Is it blasphemy to assert that on such a
scheme of existence, the latter only could be consistent with His deity?
No, human as we are, we must have something divine to aspire to.
It is curious to trace this instinct through all the clouded wisdoms of
the wise; how the materialist, who conscientiously believes that he
believes in nothing, will on parting bid you “good bye and God bless
you!” as if there were really a God to bless, and that He could bless,
and that He would take the trouble to bless you. Stand with the most
confirmed infidel by the coffin of one he loved, or any coffin, and you
will hear him sigh that he would give his whole mortal life, with all its
delights, and powers, and possibilities, if he could only see clearly
some hope of attaining the life immortal.
What do these facts imply? That the instinct which prompts us to
seek in every way to unriddle the riddle of life, or as Milton puts it,
To justify the ways of God to men,
is as irrepressible as universal. It is at the root of all the creeds and all
the philosophies, of the solid literature which discourses on life, and
the imaginative literature which attempts to pourtray it.
It were idle to reason how the thing has come about; but, undeni-
ably, the modern novel is one of the most important moral agents of
the community. The essayist may write for his hundreds; the preacher
preach to his thousands; but the novelist counts his audience by
millions. His power is threefold—over heart, reason, and fancy. The
orator we hear eagerly, but as his voice fades from us its lessons depart:
the moral philosopher we read and digest, by degrees, in a serious,
ponderous way: but the really good writer of fiction takes us altogether
by storm. Young and old, grave and gay, learned or imaginative, who
of us is safe from his influence? He creeps innocently on our family-
table in the shapes of those three well-thumbed library volumes—sits
for days after, invisibly at our fireside, a provocative of incessant discus-
sion: slowly but surely, either by admiration or aversion, his opinions,
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ideas, feelings, impress themselves upon us, which impression remains
long after we have come to that age, if we ever reach it, which all good
angels forbid! when we “don’t read novels.”
The amount of new thoughts scattered broadcast over society
within one month of the appearance of a really popular novel, the
innumerable discussions it creates, and the general influence which
it exercises in the public mind, form one of the most remarkable facts
of our day. For the novelist has ceased to be a mere story-teller or
romancist. He—we use the superior pronoun in a general sense, even
as an author should be dealt with as a neutral being, to be judged
solely by “its” work,—he buckles to his task in solemn earnest. For
what is it to “write a novel”? Something which the multitude of young
contributors to magazines, or young people who happen to have
nothing to do but weave stories, little dream of. If they did, how they
would shrink from the awfulness of what they have taken into their
innocent, foolish hands; even a piece out of the tremendous web of
human life, so wonderful in its pattern, so mysterious in its convolu-
tions, and of which—most solemn thought of all—warp, woof and
loom, are in the hands of the Maker of the universe alone.
Yet this the true novel-writer essays to do, and he has a right to
do it. He is justified in weaving his imaginary web side by side with
that which he sees perpetually and invisibly woven around him, of
which he has deeply studied the apparent plan, so as to see the
under threads that guide the pattern, keener perhaps than other
men. He has learned to deduce motives from actions, and to evolve
actions from motives: he has seen that from certain characters (and
in a less degree certain circumstances) such and such results, which
appear accidental, become in reality as inevitable as the laws which
govern the world. Laws physical and moral, with which no Deus ex
machinâ can interfere, else the whole working of the Universe
would be disturbed.
Enough has been said, we trust, to indicate the serious position
held by what used to be thought “a mere writer of fiction.” Fiction
forsooth! It is at the core of all the truths of this world; for it is the
truth of life itself. He who dares to reproduce it is a Prometheus who
has stolen celestial fire: let him beware that he uses it for the benefit
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of his fellow-mortals.
1
Otherwise one can imagine no vulture fiercer
than the remorse which would gnaw the heart of such a writer, on the
clear-visioned mountain-top of life’s ending, if he began to suspect he
had written a book which would live after him to the irremediable
injury of the world.
We do not refer to impure or immoral books. There can be but
one opinion concerning them—away with them to the Gehenna
2
from
which they come. We speak of those works, blameless in plan and
execution, yet which fall short—as great works only can—of the high-
est ideal, for which, beyond intellectual perfection, a great author
ought to strive. For he is not like other men, or other writers. His very
power makes him the more dangerous. His uncertainties, however
small, shake to their ruin hundreds of lesser minds, and
When he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to rise again.
3
If a mountebank at a fair mouths his antics of folly or foulness, we
laugh, or pass by—he is but a mountebank: he can do little harm: but
when a hierophant connives at a false miracle, or an eloquent sincere
apostle goes about preaching a bewildering lie, we shrink, we grieve,
we tremble. By and by, we take courage openly to denounce, not the
teacher but the teaching. “You are an earnest man—doubtless, a true
man—but your doctrine is not true. We, who cannot speak, but only
feel—we feel that it is not true. You are treading dangerous ground.
You have raised a ghost you cannot lay, you have thrown down a city
which you cannot rebuild. You are the very Prometheus, carrying the
stolen fire. See that it does not slip from your unwary hands, and go
devastating the world.”
Thoughts somewhat like these must have passed through the mind
of many a reader of a novel, the readers of which have been millions.
Probably the whole history of fiction does not present an instance of
to novelists—and a novelist
121
1
In Greek mythology, the Titan Prometheus took pity on human beings and stole fire
from heaven to help them.
2
Hell.
3
Lines from Shakespeare’s Henry VIII.
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two such remarkable books, following one another within so short a
time as Adam Bede, and The Mill on the Floss. All the world has read
them; and though some may prefer one, and some the other, and, in
a moral point of view, some may admire and some condemn—all the
world grants their wonderful intellectual power, and is so familiar with
the details of them that literary analysis becomes unnecessary.
Nor do we desire to attempt it. The question which these books,
and especially the latter, have suggested, is quite a different thing. It
is a question with which literary merit has nothing to do. Nor, in one
sense, literary morality,—the external morality which, thank heaven,
our modern reading public both expects and exacts, and here
undoubtedly finds. Ours is more an appeal than a criticism—an appeal
which any one of an audience has a right to make, if he thinks he sees
what the speaker, in the midst of all his eloquence, does not see—
The little pitted speck in garnered fruit,
That, rotting inward, slowly moulders all.
1
Of The Mill on the Floss, in a literary point of view, there can be but
one opinion—that, as a work of art, it is as perfect as the novel can
well be made: superior even, to Adam Bede. For the impression it gives
of power, evenly cultivated and clear sighted,—the power of creation,
amalgamating real materials into a fore-planned ideal scheme; the
power of selection, able to distinguish at once the fit and the unfit,
choosing the one and rejecting the other, so as to make every part not
only complete as to itself, but as to its relation with a well-balanced
whole—the Mill on the Floss is one of the finest imaginative works in
our language. In its diction, too: how magnificently rolls on that noble
Saxon English—terse and clear, yet infinitely harmonious, keeping in
its most simple common-place flow a certain majesty and solemnity
which reminds one involuntarily of the deep waters of the Floss. The
fatal Floss, which runs through the whole story like a Greek fate or a
Gothic destiny—ay, from the very second chapter, when
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1
Lines from Tennyson’s “All in All.”
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“Maggie, Maggie,” continued the mother, in a tone of half-coax-
ing fretfulness, as this small mistake of nature entered the room,
“where’s the use o’ my telling you to keep away from the water?
You’ll tumble in and be drownded some day, an’ then you’ll be
sorry you didn’t do as mother told you.”
This is a mere chance specimen of the care over small things—the
exquisite polish of each part, that yet never interferes with the
breadth of the whole—which marks this writer as one of the truest
artists, in the highest sense, of our or any other age.
Another impression made strongly by the first work of “George
Eliot,” and repeated by “his” (we prefer to respect the pseudonym)
second, is the earnestness, sincerity, and heart-nobility of the author.
Though few books are freer from that morbid intrusion of self in
which many writers of fiction indulge, no one can lay down The Mill
on the Floss without a feeling of having held commune with a mind of
rare individuality, with a judgment active and clear, and with a moral
nature, conscientious, generous, religious, and pure. It is to this moral
nature, this noblest half of all literary perfectness, in our author, as
in all other authors, that we now make appeal.
“George Eliot,” or any other conscientious novelist, needs not to
be told that he who appropriates this strange phantasmagoria of
human life, to repaint and rearrange by the light of his own imagi-
nation, takes materials not his own, nor yet his reader’s. He deals with
mysteries which, in their entirety, belong alone to the Maker of the
universe. By the force of his intellect, the quick sympathies of his
heart, he may pierce into them a little way—farther, perhaps, than
most people—but at best only a little way. He will be continually
stopped by things he cannot understand—matters too hard for him,
which make him feel, the more deeply and humbly as he grows more
wise, how we are, at best,
Like infants crying in the dark
And with no language but a cry.
1
to novelists—and a novelist
123
1
Lines from Tennyson’s In Memoriam.
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If by his dimly-beheld, one-sided, fragmentary representations, which
mimic untruly the great picture of life, this cry, either in his own voice,
or in the involuntary utterance of his readers, rises into an accusation
against God, how awful is his responsibility, how tremendous the evil
that he may originate! 
We doubt not, the author of the Mill on the Floss would shudder at
the suspicion of this sort of involuntary blasphemy, and yet such is the
tendency of the book and its story.
A very simple story. A girl of remarkable, gifts—mentally, physically,
and morally; born, like thousands more, of parents far inferior to
herself—struggles through a repressed childhood, a hopeless youth:
brought suddenly out of this darkness into the glow of a first passion for
a man who, ignoble as he may be, is passionately in earnest with regard
to her: she is tempted to treachery, and sinks into a great error , her extri-
cation out of which, without involving certain misery and certain wrong
to most or all around her, is simply an impossibility. The author cuts the
Gordian knot by creating a flood on the Floss, which wafts this poor
child out of her troubles and difficulties into the other world.
Artistically speaking, this end is very fine. Towards it the tale has
gradually climaxed. From such a childhood as that of Tom and
Maggie Tulliver, nothing could have come but the youth Tom and the
girl Maggie, as we find them throughout that marvellous third
volume: changed indeed, but still keeping the childish images of little
Tom, and little Maggie, of Dorlcote Mill. Ay, even to the hour, when
with that sense of the terrible exalted into the sublime, which only
genius can make us feel—we see them go down to the deeps of the
Floss “in an embrace never to be parted: living through again, in one
supreme moment, the days when they had clasped their little hands
in love, and roamed through the daisied fields together.”
So far as exquisite literary skill, informed and vivified by the high-
est order of imaginative power, can go, this story is perfect. But take
it from another point of view. Ask, what good will it do?—whether it
will lighten any burdened heart, help any perplexed spirit, comfort
the sorrowful, succour the tempted, or bring back the erring into the
way of peace; and what is the answer? Silence.
Let us reconsider the story, not artistically, but morally.
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Here is a human being, placed during her whole brief life—her
hapless nineteen years—under circumstances the hardest and most
fatal that could befal one of her temperament. She has all the invol-
untary egotism and selfishness of a nature that, while eagerly craving
for love, loves ardently and imaginatively rather than devotedly; and
the only love that might have at once humbled and raised her, by
showing her how far nobler it was than her own—Philip’s—is taken
from her in early girlhood. Her instincts of right, true as they are,
have never risen into principles; her temptations to vanity, and many
other faults, are wild and fierce; yet no human help ever comes near
her to strengthen one or subdue the other. This may be true to nature,
and yet we think it is not. Few of us, calmly reviewing our past, can
feel that we have ever been left so long and so utterly without either
outward aid, or the inner voice—never silent in a heart like poor
Maggie’s. It is, in any case, a perilous doctrine to preach—the
doctrine of overpowering circumstances.
Again, notwithstanding the author’s evident yearning over Maggie,
and disdain for Tom, we cannot but feel that if people are to be
judged by the only fair human judgment, of how far they act up to
what they believe in, Tom, so far as his light goes, is a finer character
than his sister. He alone has the self-denial to do what he does not
like, for the sake of doing right: he alone has the self-command to
smother his hopeless love, and live on, a brave, hard-working life; he,
except in his injustice to poor Maggie, has at least the merit of having
made no one else miserable. Perfectly true is what he says, though he
says it in a Pharisaical way, “Yes, I have had feelings to struggle with,
but I conquered them. I have had a harder life than you have had,
but I have found my comfort in doing my duty.” Nay, though perhaps
scarcely intended, Bob Jakin’s picture of the solitary lad, “as close as
an iron biler,” who “sits by himself so glumpish, a-knittin’ his brow,
an’ a-lookin’ at the fire of a night,” is in its way as pathetic as Maggie’s
helpless cry to Dr. Kenn, at the bazaar, “Oh, I must go.”
In the whole history of this fascinating Maggie there is a pictur-
esque piteousness which somehow confuses one’s sense of right and
wrong. Yet what—we cannot help asking—what is to become of the
hundreds of clever girls, born of uncongenial parents, hemmed in
to novelists—and a novelist
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with unsympathising kindred of the Dodson sort, blest with no lover
on whom to bestow their strong affections, no friend to whom to cling
for guidance and support? They must fight their way, heaven help
them! alone and unaided through cloud and darkness, to the light.
And, thank heaven, hundreds of them do, and live to hold out a help-
ing hand afterwards to thousands more. “The middle-aged” (says
“George Eliot,” in this very book), “who have lived through their
strongest emotions, but are yet in the time when memory is still half-
passionate and not merely contemplative, should surely be a sort of
natural priesthood, whom life has disciplined and consecrated to be
the refuge and rescue of early stumblers and victims of self-despair.”
Will it help these—such a picture as Maggie, who, with all her high
aspirations and generous qualities, is, throughout her poor young life,
a stay and comfort to no human being, but, on the contrary, a source of
grief and injury to every one connected with her? If we are to judge char-
acter by results—not by grand imperfect essays, but by humbler fulfil-
ments—of how much more use in the world were even fond, shallow
Lucy, and narrow-minded Tom, than this poor Maggie, who seems only
just to have caught hold of the true meaning and beauty of existence in
that last pathetic prayer, “If my life is to be long, let me live to bless and
comfort,” when she is swept away out of our sight and love for ever.
True this is, as we have said, a magnificent ending for the book; but
is it for the life—the one human life which this author has created so
vividly and powerfully, that we argue concerning it as if we had actually
known it? Will it influence for good any other real lives—this passion-
ately written presentment of temptation never conquered, or just so far
that we see its worst struggle as but beginning; of sorrows which teach
nothing, or teach only bitterness; of love in its most delicious, most
deadly phase; love blind, selfish, paramount, seeing no future but
possession, and, that hope gone, no alternative but death—death,
welcomed as the solution of all difficulties, the escape from all pain?
Is this right? Is it a creed worthy of an author who has pre-
eminently what all novelists should have, “the brain of a man and the
heart of a woman,” united with what we may call a sexless intelligence,
clear and calm, able to observe, and reason, and guide mortal
passions, as those may, who have come out of the turmoil of flesh into
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the region of ministering spirits, “αγγελοι,”
1
messengers between God
and man? What if the messenger testify falsely? What if the celestial
trumpet give forth an uncertain sound?
Yet let us be just. There are those who argue that this—perhaps the
finest ending, artistically, of any modern novel, is equally fine in a
moral sense: that the death of Maggie and Tom is a glorious
Euthanasia, showing that when even at the eleventh hour, temptation
is conquered, error atoned, and love reconciled, the life is complete:
its lesson has been learnt, its work done; there is nothing more
needed but the vade in pacem
2
to an immediate heaven. This, if the
author so meant it, was an idea grand, noble, Christian: as Christian
(be it said with reverence) as the doctrine preached by the Divine
Pardoner of all sinners to the sinner beside whom He died—“To-day
shalt thou be with me in paradise.”
3
But the conception ought to have
been worked out so plainly that no reader could mistake it. We should
not have been left to feel, as we do feel, undecided whether this death
was a translation or an escape: whether if they had not died, Maggie
would not have been again the same Maggie, always sinning and
always repenting; and Tom the same Tom, hard and narrow-minded,
though the least ray of love and happiness cast over his gloomy life
might have softened and made a thoroughly good man of him. The
author ought to have satisfied us entirely as to the radical change in
both; else we fall back upon the same dreary creed of overpowering
circumstances: of human beings struggling for ever in a great quag-
mire of unconquerable temptations, inevitable and hopeless woe. A
creed more fatal to every noble effort, and brave self-restraint—above
all to that humble faith in the superior Will which alone should
govern ours—can hardly be conceived. It is true that there occur
sometimes in life positions so complex and overwhelming, that plain
right and wrong become confused; until the most righteous and reli-
gious man is hardly able to judge clearly or act fairly. But to meet such
positions is one thing, to invent them is another. It becomes a serious
question whether any author—who, great as his genius may be, sees
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127
1
Angels.
2
Depart in peace; a benediction.
3
Luke 23:43.
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no farther than mortal intelligence can—is justified in leading his
readers into a labyrinth, the way out of which he does not, first, see
clearly himself, and next, is able to make clear to them, so as to leave
them mentally and morally at rest, free from all perplexity and uncer-
tainty.
Now, uncertainty is the prevailing impression with which we close
the Mill on the Floss. We are never quite satisfied in our detestation of
the Dodson family, the more odious because so dreadfully natural that
we feel we all are haunted by some of the race, could name them
among our own connections, perhaps have even received kindnesses
from a Mrs. Pullet, a Mrs. Glegg, or a Mrs. Tulliver. We are vexed with
ourselves for being so angry with stern, honest, upright, business-like
Tom—so contemptuously indifferent to gentle unsuspicious Lucy, with
her universal kindness, extending from “the more familiar rodents”
to her silly aunt Tulliver. We question much whether such a generous
girl as Maggie would have fallen in love with Stephen at all; whether
she would not from the first have regarded him simply as her cousin’s
lover, and if his passion won anything from her, it would but have been
the half-angry half-sorrowful disdain which a high-minded woman
could not help feeling towards a man who forgot duty and honour in
selfish love, even though the love were for herself. And, last and chief
perplexity of all, we feel that, granting the case as our author puts it,
the mischief done, the mutual passion mutually confessed, Stephen’s
piteous arguments have some justice on their side. The wrong done
to him in Maggie’s forsaking him was almost as great as the wrong
previously done to Philip and Lucy:—whom no self-sacrifice on her
part or Stephen’s could ever have made happy again.
And, to test the matter, what reader will not confess, with a vague
sensation of uneasy surprise, to have taken far less interest in all the good
injured personages of the story, than in this mad Stephen and treach-
erous Maggie? Who that is capable of understanding—as a thing which
has been or is, or may one day be—the master-passion that furnishes the
key to so many lives, will not start to find how vividly this book revives it,
or wakens it, or places it before him as a future possibility? Who does
not think with a horribly delicious feeling, of such a crisis, when right
and wrong, bliss and bale, justice and conscience, seem swept from their
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boundaries, and a whole existence of Dodsons, Lucys, and Tom
Tullivers, appears worth nothing compared to the ecstasy of that “one
kiss—the last” between Stephen and Maggie in the lane?
Is this right? The spell once broken—broken with the closing of
the book—every high and pure and religious instinct within us
answers unhesitatingly—“No.”
It is not right to paint Maggie only, as she is in her strong, unsatis-
fied, erring youth—and leave her there, her doubts unresolved, her
passions unregulated, her faults unatoned and unforgiven: to cut her
off ignobly and accidentally, leaving two acts, one her recoil with
regard to Stephen, and the other her instinctive self-devotion in going
to rescue Tom, as the sole noble landmarks of a life that had in it every
capability for good with which a woman could be blessed. It is not
right to carry us on through these three marvellous volumes, and
leave us at the last standing by the grave of the brother and sister,
ready to lift up an accusatory cry, less to beneficent Deity than to the
humanly-invented Arimanes
1
of the universe.—“Why should such
things be? Why hast Thou made us thus?”
But it may be urged, that fiction has its counterpart, and worse, in
daily truth. How many perplexing histories do we not know of young
lives blighted, apparently by no fault of their own; of blameless lives
dragged into irresistible temptations; of high natures so meshed in
by circumstances that they, as well as we, judging them from without,
can hardly distinguish right from wrong, guilt from innocence; of
living and loveable beings so broken down by unmerited afflictions,
that when at last they come to an end, we look on the poor dead face
with a sense of thankfulness that there at least,
There is no other thing expressed:
But long disquiet merged in rest.
2
All this is most true, so far as we see. But we never can see, not even the
wisest and greatest of us, anything like the whole of even the meanest and
to novelists—and a novelist
129
1
In Persian mythology, Arimanes is the source of all evil.
2
Lines from Tennyson’s “The Two Voices.”
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 129
briefest human life. We never can know through what fiery trial of temp-
tation, nay, even sin,—for sin itself appears sometimes in the wonderful
alchemy of the universe to be used as an agent for good,—a strong soul
is being educated into a saintly minister to millions of weaker souls:
coming to them with the authority of one whom suffering has taught
how to heal suffering; nay, whom the very fact of having sinned once,
has made more deeply to pity, so as more easily to rescue sinners. And,
lastly, we never can comprehend, unless by experience, that exceeding
peace—the “peace which passeth all understanding,” which is often-
times seen in those most heavily and hopelessly afflicted: those who have
lost all, and gained their own souls: whereof they possess themselves in
patience: waiting until the supreme moment of which our author
speaks, but which is to them not an escape from the miseries of this
world, but a joyful entrance into the world everlasting.
Ay, thank heaven, though the highest human intellect may fail to
hear it, there are millions of human hearts yet living and throbbing,
or mouldering quietly into dust, who have felt, all through the
turmoil or silence of existence, though lasting for threescore years
and ten, a continual still small voice, following them to the end: “Fear
not: for I am thy God.”
1
Would that in some future book, as powerful as The Mill on the Floss,
the author might become a true “αγγελοξ”
2
and teach us this!
SOURCE
Macmillan’s 3 (April 1861).
SELECTED SECONDARY READING
Mitchell, Sally. Dinah Mulock Craik. Boston: Twayne, 1983.
a serious occupation
130
1
Isaiah 41:10.
2
Angel.
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janet thomson (1795–1873) was born in Shotts,
Lanarkshire, the daughter of a shoemaker and his wife. When
she was still very young, the family moved to nearby Langloan,
where her parents worked for a time as field labourers. As a
child, she contributed to the family’s income first by spinning
yarn and later by her embroidery. She also taught herself to
read before she was five years old, and borrowed books from
neighbours and the village library, notably Milton’s Paradise
Lost, various histories, volumes of the Spectator and Rambler,
and the poetry of Robert Burns, as well as the Bible. In 1809
she married John Hamilton, who worked for her father, and
they eventually had ten children, all of whom she educated
at home while continuing to work as an embroiderer.
Although she had not yet learned to write, Hamilton began
composing poetry in her teens, memorizing her works as she
composed them. She finally taught herself to write at the age
of 54, and she soon after submitted a number of essays to a
contest in the penny weekly Working-Man’s Friend. She contin-
ued to publish essays in the Working-Man’s Friend under the
byline “Janet Hamilton, a Shoemaker’s Wife” until the jour-
nal folded in 1854, one of the only women to do so. She also
began to write down her poetry, eventually publishing a
number of volumes, including Poems and Essays of a
Miscellaneous Character (1863), Poems of Purpose and Sketches in
Prose (1865), Poems and Ballads (1868), and Poems, Essays, and
131
THE USES AND PLEASURES OF POETRY FOR
THE WORKING CLASSES
(1863)
Janet Hamilton
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Sketches (1870). Her writing slowed down as her eyesight
began to fail, but she remained a popular and respected
figure whose work was favourably reviewed in the press. More
than 400 people attended her funeral in 1873, and when
sufficient money was raised to erect a memorial to her in
Coatbridge a few years later, as many as 20,000 people gath-
ered to hear the dedicatory lecture.
The following piece, which was published in Poems and
Essays, presents Hamilton’s deep commitment to education.
Opening with her regret that the working classes are
debarred from many opportunities for personal enrichment,
Hamilton points out that access to literature nevertheless
makes it possible for any one to “indulge a taste for the
sublime and beautiful.” The essay, though brief, is impressive
in the range of its allusions, from Milton to Shakespeare to
Gray, Cowper, and Campbell—all of whom Hamilton quotes
from memory, giving testament to the quality of her own self-
education. Notably, along with the high-culture poets,
Hamilton also cites the working-class writers Robert Burns
and Ebenezer Elliott, illustrating how “the gifts of God, of
Nature, and of the Muses are as impartially and profusely
bestowed” on the lower classes as on the upper ones.
i have often thought and felt it to be matter of deep
regret that working-men and women, in consequence of their
social position, and the want of means and leisure, are to a great
extent debarred from the attainment of the elegant tastes and
refined perceptions acquired by those on whom the gifts of
fortune, and a desire of improving and adorning their minds, have
conferred the high advantages of a liberal and finished education.
Still, the working-man who is a good English reader, and possessed
of an intellectual cast of mind, seasoned with a dash of fancy and
feeling—although he may never have offered up his personal devo-
tions at the shrine of the Muses, nor ever essayed to “build the lofty
a serious occupation
132
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 132
rhyme,”
1
thanks to the facilities afforded by cheap literature!—may yet
indulge a taste for the sublime and beautiful, and be quite as capable
of appreciating the treasures contained in the rich and varied stores of
the higher walks of the best poets, as if he had ascended through all
the gradations of learning from the parish school to the finale of a clas-
sical education in the patrician halls of Oxford or Cambridge. The
workman may never be able to “tread the classic shores of Italy”;
2
he
may never feast his eyes on the glorious monuments of antiquity which
surround the eternal sunny land of Greece, “Land of the Muses and of
mighty men”; nor glide with oar and sail over the gorgeous waters of
the golden Horn; nor wander over “Syria’s land of roses” and feel “The
light wings of zephyr, oppressed with perfume,” fanning his cheek amid
the roses of Sharon in the Holy Land.
No; the workman, as such, will probably never see, except in
dreams, these lands of song and story, nor gaze upon the glowing
scenes where all that is grand and beautiful in nature and art combine
to trance the soul in admiration; but still he can, when the toils of the
day are ended, retire to his home, and having performed his ablu-
tions, and solaced himself with “the cup which cheers but not inebri-
ates,”
3
he then “when worldly crowds retire to revel or to rest,” can
“trim his little fire,” or light his frugal taper; and while holding
communion with the spirits of the mighty masters of song in their
immortal pages, may feel every noble principle of his mind strength-
ened, every emotion of his heart warmed and purified, and every feel-
ing refined and elevated. Does his heart beat and his pulse throb with
sorrow and indignation at the wrongs and sufferings of the Magyars
When leagued oppression, poured to Northern wars
Her whiskered pandoors and her fierce huzzars?
4
the uses and pleasures of poetry for the working classes
133
1
Line from Milton’s Lycidas.
2
In the following passage, Hamilton quotes from classical sources, as well as from poems
that celebrate Italy and Greece, such as Joseph Addison’s (1672–1719) “A Letter from
Italy” and Byron’s “The Bride of Abydos.”
3
In other words, tea; line from William Cowper’s (1731–1800) narrative poem The Task.
4
These and the next two lines are from Scottish poet Thomas Campbell’s (1777–1844)
epic The Pleasures of Hope, about the sufferings endured by the people of Poland during
its partition.
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Then will he feel the full force of the sentiment expressed by the bard
when he exclaimed—
Oh! bloodiest picture in the book of Time,
Hungaria fell, unwept, without a crime!
Or, does all the soul of man stir within him and leap out to those men
who feel for, speak for, write for, nay, who spend and are spent for the
cause of
Yonder poor o’er-laboured wights,
So abject, mean, and vile,
Who beg a brother of the earth
To give them leave to toil?
1
Yes, to those large-hearted men who are striving to heal the sores of
the beggar Lazarus, and teaching him how to obtain a nobler meal
than the crumbs which fall from the rich man’s table; and will not his
heart respond in “thoughts that breathe, and words that burn,”
2
to
the fervid rhymes launched by the muse of Elliott
3
at those who, like
Dives, are “clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously
every day,” and yet see unmoved their poor brother, laid down to
perish at their gates?
4
And when his faith is assailed, and his ears
pained by the cavillings of the Deist or the sneers of the Infidel
amongst the associates of his labour, let him turn to the sublime
thoughts of Young, the poet of the night, where awful truths arrayed
in solemn and majestic garb, shall uncurl the lip of the scoffer and
silence the cavils of the sceptic; or with Cowper he will deplore
The quenchless thirst of ruinous inebriety,
The stale debauch forth issuing from the styes
Which law has licensed...
a serious occupation
134
1
Lines, slightly misquoted, from Robert Burns’ (1759–96) “Dirge.”
2
Line from Thomas Gray’s (1716–71) The Progress of Poesy.
3
Ebenezer Elliott (1781–1849), English working-class poet.
4
Reference to the parable of the rich man and the poor man (see Luke 16).
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 134
... While ten thousand casks,
For ever dribbling forth their base contents,
Touched by the Midas finger of the State,
Bleed gold for Ministers to sport withal.
1
And will he not at times rise on the wings of fancy, and hover enrap-
tured over the bright world of scenic creations produced by the magic
pencil of him, the great poet, painter, and worshipper of nature, glori-
ous Shakspeare? And when he hails the return of the thrice-blessed and
thrice-welcome day of sacred rest—that true well in the desert, in whose
cool and sparkling waters the working-man, weary and panting from
the dusty ways of life, will slake his parching thirst, and lave his flushed
and throbbing temples; and then, “If summer be the tide, and sweet
the hour,” let him wander forth to the green woodlands, or recline on
the fragrant meadow, with the Bard of Paradise for his companion, and
soon the Miltonic Muse shall waft him aloft on her ethereal pinions to
the Sanctuary of God, there to listen with rapt adoration to the eternal
councils of peace between the Father and Son on the future salvation
of man; or his heart may be attuned to the melodies of heaven, and in
spirit he can join in the ecstatic and jubilant anthems of cherubim and
seraphim, celebrating the triumphs of the eternal Son, when by His
omnipotent right hand, armed with winged and scorching lightnings,
He drove forth the apostate angels, blasted and howling—
Down from the crystal battlements of heaven
With sheer descent—
2
to the burning gulf below; or the scene is changed, and, lo! before
his visioned eye passes the sublime panorama of the Creation. He
stands in the presence of the Deity; he sees the mystic Dove brooding
over the chaos of dark and troubled waters which cover the void and
formless earth; he hears the Almighty fiat, “Let there be light,” and
he sees the conflicting and struggling elements separated, arranged,
the uses and pleasures of poetry for the working classes
135
1
Lines from Cowper’s Task.
2
Lines from Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 135
and organised by the word of His power into all the forms of order,
utility, and beauty, so as to be most conducive to the glory of the
Divine Architect and the use and accommodation of man. And now
the Divine Urania will introduce him into the presence of the first
human pair, fresh from the hand of God—glorious in beauty, and
sinless in soul. He may roam through the groves of Paradise, and join
with them in their morning and evening orisons—he may recline with
them in the bowers of Eden on a couch of amaranth, and, while hold-
ing converse with angels, partake of the ambrosial fruits culled by the
hand of the mother of all living.
But this is, indeed, an inexhaustible subject, and one to which my
limited powers can by no means render justice; yet it is truly consol-
ing for working-men and women to know—ay, and to feel—that on
them, amidst all the toils, privations, and hardships incidental to their
position in life, the gifts of God, of Nature, and of the Muses are as
impartially and profusely bestowed as on that portion of the commu-
nity whose highest distinctions are too often found to consist only in
the accidents of birth and fortune. “Sweet are the uses of adversity,”
1
sings the poet: and “sweet are the uses of poetry,” says the working-
man of cultivated intellect and refined feeling—for to him there
exists not a situation so irksome, a care so crushing, a trial so painful,
a privation so severe, a suffering so intense, but he has felt in them
all, that, next to the consolations of religion, those of Divine poesy
are most potent in power to
Minister to a mind diseased,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the charged bosom of that perilous stuff
That weighs upon the heart.
2
And amidst blasted hopes and wasted aspirations he may imbibe the
very spirit of courage, patience, and resignation by appropriating the
sublime sentiments expressed by Campbell in those beautiful lines:—
a serious occupation
136
1
Line from Shakespeare’s As You Like It.
2
Lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 136
Be hushed, my dark spirit, for wisdom condemns
When the faint and the feeble deplore;
Be strong as the rock of the ocean that stems
A thousand wild waves on the shore.
Through the perils of chance and the scowl of disdain
May thy front be unaltered, thy courage elate!
Yea, even the name I have worshipped in vain
Shall awake not the sigh of remembrance again—
To bear is to conquer our fate!
1
SOURCE
Poems and Essays (Glasgow, 1863)
SELECTED SECONDARY READING
Boos, Florence. “The ‘Homely Muse’ in Her Diurnal Setting: The
Periodical Poems of ‘Marie,’ Janet Hamilton, and Fanny
Forrester.” Victorian Poetry 39.2 (2001): 255–85.
Boos, Florence. “Janet Hamilton.” Victorian Women Poets. Ed. William
Thesing. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.
Gilfillan, George. “Janet Hamilton: Her Life and Poetical Character.”
Poems and Ballads. By Janet Hamilton. Glasgow: Maclehose, 1868.
ix-xxxiv.
the uses and pleasures of poetry for the working classes
137
1
Verse from Campbell’s “Lines,” which begins “At the silence of twilight’s contemplative
hour.”
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 137
geraldine jewsbury (1812–80) was born in
Measham, England, the youngest child of a millowner and his
wife. When their mother died in 1818, Geraldine’s eldest sister
Maria took over the household, and the family moved to
Manchester. Maria, a poet, essayist, and regular contributor to
the Manchester Gazette, was both mother-figure and literary
inspiration for Geraldine, and her death in 1833, after moving
to India with her husband, left Geraldine somewhat adrift.
Around the time of her father’s death in 1840, Jewsbury
began her lifelong friendship with Thomas and Jane Welsh
Carlyle. The latter, with whom Jewsbury maintained a passion-
ate and witty correspondence, provided a sounding-board
when Jewsbury began to write fiction in the 1840s, and she
also introduced Jewsbury to publishers and other literary
figures. Jewsbury published six novels in the 1840s and 1850s,
the best-known of which are Zoe: The History of Two Lives
(1845), The Half Sisters (1848), and Marian Withers (1851).
On the strength of her experience as a novelist and her
connections, during this period Jewsbury also secured work
as a literary critic, serving as a reviewer for the weekly literary
review The Athenaeum from 1849 on, and also working as a
manuscript reader for several publishers, especially Bentley
and Son, for whom she was the primary fiction reviewer from
1858 on. As a critic, Jewsbury was astonishingly prolific: she
reviewed approximately 2,300 titles for the Athenaeum, taking
138
REVIEW OF COMETH UP AS A FLOWER
(APRIL 1867)
Geraldine Jewsbury
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 138
primary responsibility for the review’s “New Novels” section,
and as a publisher’s reader for Bentley’s, she advised on well
over 600 works, mostly fiction, but also biography and travel-
writing. Because she was positioned as a gatekeeper both at
the very beginning of the publishing process and at the point
that a book was first launched to its readers, Jewsbury was an
extremely influential force in mid-Victorian fiction.
Jewsbury’s criticism is noteworthy for its constant attention
to the tastes of the typical mid-Victorian novel reader. While
she always spoke on behalf of literary quality when she encoun-
tered it, she saw her primary responsibility as championing
good reads. Thus, while she clearly admires the scholarship
informing Charles Reade’s The Cloister and the Hearth (1861)
and George Eliot’s Romola (1863), she warns that even patient,
well-intended readers may find these historical novels some-
what pedantic and slow. By contrast, she was an early supporter
of the emerging sensation novel, recognizing that the fast plot-
ting and surprise endings would excite readers. She enthusi-
astically urged Bentley’s to publish Ellen Price Wood’s East
Lynne (1861), and she shared the firm’s disappointment when
they lost the bidding war for M.E. Braddon’s runaway best-
sellers Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) and Aurora Floyd (1863).
However, as a critic for the mainstream reviews and publish-
ing houses, Jewsbury also had to be an upholder of middle-
class morality, and novels that strayed too far from the
expected formulas drew her ire. The following piece, her
1867 review of Rhoda Broughton’s Cometh Up as a Flower, is a
case in point. The previous year, Jewsbury had been instru-
mental in Bentley’s decision not to publish Broughton’s Not
Wisely but Too Well, even after the author rewrote the ending,
because of the novel’s lurid plot about a young girl who falls
in love with a married man who eventually kills her. Given her
objections to the author’s first book, Jewsbury was outraged
when Bentley’s published Broughton’s next novel without
even consulting her: in a letter to the publisher, Jewsbury
demanded, “What evil angel persuaded you to accept that
review of COMETH UP AS A FLOWER
139
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 139
coarse vulgar and very objectionable novel Cometh up as a
Flower? I felt ashamed as I read it.” Having been unable to
prevent its publication by Bentley’s, Jewsbury wreaked her
revenge in the pages of the Athenaeum, providing a caustic plot
summary that highlights the immorality of the two female
characters and incorporating multiple brief quotations to illus-
trate the novel’s rather purple prose style. Convinced by the
unflattering portrayals of the female leads that the author had
to be a man—and one ill-acquainted with polite company—
Jewsbury calculated that the best way to convince readers that
it was a “thoroughly bad style of book” and “not redeemed by
talent” was to let the novel sink itself with its own words.
Cometh Up as a Flower professes to be the autobiography of a charm-
ing young heroine; but the reader will make much the same discov-
ery as Slender in The Merry Wives of Windsor, who says, “I came yonder
at Eton to marry Mistress Anne Page, and she a great lubberly boy!”
1
That the author is not a young woman, but a man, who, in the pres-
ent story, shows himself destitute of refinement of thought or feeling,
and ignorant of all that women either are or ought to be, is evident
on every page. The style of the book is bad, and full of slang; the story
itself is not one to be put into the hands of girls with a view to what
some one calls “their beneficial amusement.” There is an all-pervad-
ing coarseness of thought and expression which is startling in its free
and unrestrained utterance.
The descriptions which the young lady gives of her love-scenes would
be coarse and flippant even as the confidential narrative of a fast young
man of the order of “jolly dogs” to a kindred companion. There is a
mixture of slang and sensuality, which, setting aside all other consid-
erations, is in the worst possible taste. Of good feeling, or ordinary good
a serious occupation
140
1
Characters in the subplot of Shakespeare’s play. Slender is one of three contenders for
Anne Page’s hand; in the end, Anne elopes with the gentleman Fenton, while Slender
and the other unsuccessful suitor each end up with a boy merely disguised as Anne.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 140
principle, there is not a trace. There is a sensual sentimentality, self-
indulgent emotion, a morbid scepticism, with dashes of equally morbid
religious emotion. Of all true love or noble sentiment the story is desti-
tute. We are sorry to see a book of this kind making its appearance
among our works of fiction; it is a thoroughly bad style of book, and it
is not redeemed by talent: there is no knowledge of life or character or
human nature displayed. The only two phases of existence which the
author, in his assumed feminine character, seems to think women
recognize, are, the delight of being kissed by a man they like, and the
misery of being kissed by one they don’t like. These two points seem to
fill up his idea of the whole duty of women.
The heroine is a young lady of nineteen, by her own account the
daughter of the Rev. Sir Adrian Lestrange, who is the sole represen-
tative of an ancient family now fallen into debt and decay. At a dinner-
party she meets a handsome dragoon, with yellow hair, a stalwart
figure, blue eyes, and “a brow that looked like marble and smelt like
myrrh.” She goes “sweethearting” with him; meets him in the garden,
at nine o’clock at night, three days after she has seen him for the first
time, and allows him, as poor Hood sings,—
To embrace her and to face her
So familiar and so easy,—
1
which is all set forth in very ardent terms. They at length “hear the
gravel crunching,” and some one coming. In reply to some request
from her yellow-haired lover, she says, “I made the required concession
with less bashfulness than might have been expected of me, and then
took to my heels, panting, dishevelled, crimson, but in safety.” Arrived
in her own chamber, “There I sat by the open casement-window, with
a box of mignonette under my nose, with my candle fast flickering in
its socket, and departing this life with a grievous stink, and with the
summer dawn broadening across the pearl-grey sky. I had fallen neck
and crop into love.” Speaking of another interview, she says, “Good
God! how happy I felt, lying in his arms, and the top of my tall wreath
review of COMETH UP AS A FLOWER
141
1
Lines from an unidentified poem by Thomas Hood (1799–1845), English poet.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 141
scratching his handsome nose!” Speaking of the surprise of a butcher
on being paid his long-overdue bill, she says, “He escaped apoplexy by
a near shave that time ... so he thrust a hand as big as a fillet of veal into
his pocket, and counted out the change.” The course of the young
lady’s true love is interrupted by the designs of her elder sister, who
chooses she shall marry a middle-aged baronet of £12,000 a year. He
was a good man, and deserved a better fate. By the aid of treachery on
the part of her sister, and the pressure of debts and difficulties on her
father, Nelly is induced to accept Sir Hugh Lancaster. The description
of her repugnance to the marriage is very coarse. She says, “For a pair
of first-class blue eyes warranted fast colour, for ditto superfine red lips,
so many pounds of prime white flesh, he has paid down a handsome
price on the nail without haggling.” Her sister, upbraiding her with her
tears, says, “You had better try to bathe the swelling and redness out of
your eyes, if we are to get any money out of him; you don’t look a choice
morsel to bribe any man with as you are now.” The baronet has some
misgivings, in spite of the elder sister’s lies, and offers to break the
engagement in a generous and manly manner. “Nonsense,” I cry; “say
no more about it. I intend to be your wife, and I suppose we shall
manage to scratch on pretty much as other people do.” She marries
him, and as her father dies almost immediately, her sacrifice is useless.
She goes with her husband to his fine house, ridicules his mother, and
dilates on her husband’s manner to her as “horribly, needlessly, and
irksomely loving.” In a few weeks she discovers the deceit her sister has
practised about her old lover. His regiment is ordered to India, and
they have an interview, in which she says, “My hair fell in its splendid
ruddy billows over his great shoulders, and my arms were flung round
the stately pillar of his throat.” He being a man of some principle,
declines to let her run away with him. She hears of his death in India
some months afterwards, and finds nothing better to do with her life
than to write this autobiography and die at the age of two-and-twenty.
The wicked sister becomes a viscountess, and has a train of twelve
bridesmaids. “However,” says the heroine, “it is rather a scratch team
after all, we having been obliged to eke it out with an old maid and a
child.” “A bishop in very clear lawn sleeves and painfully thin legs, with
two high-church clergymen,” perform the service.
a serious occupation
142
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 142
At every page there is some offence against good taste or good feel-
ing; but we have quoted enough to substantiate the grave censure we
have recorded against this book, which is not a desirable “flower” to
come up in any parterre.
SOURCE
Athenaeum 2060 (April 1867).
SELECTED SECONDARY READING
Fahnestock, Jeanne Rosenmayer. “Geraldine Jewsbury: The Power of
the Publisher’s Reader.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 28.3 (1973):
253–72.
Fryckstedt, Monica Correa. Geraldine Jewsbury’s Athenaeum Reviews: A
Mirror of Mid-Victorian Attitudes to Fiction. Uppsala, Sweden: Acta
Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1986.
Howe, Susanne. Geraldine Jewsbury: Her Life and Errors. London: Allen
and Unwin, 1935.
review of COMETH UP AS A FLOWER
143
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Born in Wallyford, Scotland, near Edinburgh, to a customs
official and his wife, margaret oliphant wilson
(1828–97) claimed that she began writing because she didn’t
like to sew and needed a quiet occupation while sitting by her
mother’s sickbed. Her first novel, in a list that was to number
about 100, was Margaret Maitland (1849). On the strength of
two more novels, in 1852 she approached William Blackwood,
proprietor of the prestigious Blackwood and Sons publishing
house. The publication of Katie Stewart (1853) marked the
beginning of what was to be a half-century association with the
firm. Also in 1852, she married her cousin Frank Oliphant, an
artist, and the young couple moved to London to establish a
stained glass studio. Frank was both a rather hapless business-
man and increasingly ill, and in 1859 the family moved to Italy,
seeking a more congenial climate. When Frank died at the end
of the year, he left the pregnant Margaret stranded with small
children and considerably worse off financially than she had
been led to believe. From that point until the end of her life,
she wrote almost continuously, supporting with her literary
earnings not only her own children, but her brothers and nieces
and nephews as well. All of her children predeceased her, and
her anguish over their loss is related with heartbreaking direct-
ness in her posthumously published Autobiography (1899).
Although she wrote widely for the major periodicals and
presses of the day, the relationship with Blackwood’s was the
144
NOVELS
(SEPTEMBER 1867)
Margaret Oliphant
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defining one of her career. Oliphant not only wrote fiction
for the house—most notably the series of novels that make
up the Chronicles of Carlingford (1862–76)—but also
biography, including the Life of Edward Irving (1862); history,
including her Literary History of England (1882); and art crit-
icism. She also wrote the authorized history of the firm,
Annals of a Publishing House (1897). Among her 300–odd arti-
cles for Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (Maga) were numer-
ous literary and social reviews, some of which appeared in her
regular columns, “The Old Saloon” (1887–92) and “The
Looker-on” (1894–96). While much of her criticism takes a
relatively conservative stance, this likely reflects her catering
to the tastes of Maga’s editors as much as her own opinions.
The following article, “Novels,” is one of several influential
essays on the state of English fiction published by Oliphant
in Maga during the 1860s. In “Sensation Novels” (1862), she
had warned that the spirit of the age was increasingly one of
“Hectic rebellion against nature”—a rebellion symbolized by
such characters as Jane Eyre and Lady Isabel in Ellen Wood’s
thriller East Lynne—and that life would begin to imitate art.
By 1867, she thought her predictions were being borne out.
Singling out the novels of Mary Elizabeth Braddon and of
Annie Thomas (to whom she mistakenly attributed Rhoda
Broughton’s novel Cometh Up as a Flower), Oliphant objects
that the picture they paint of women ruled by their passions
“comes from the hands of women,” but also that women read-
ers accept the picture “as real.” Applying the critical double
standard, Oliphant declares that “It is a shame to women so
to write,” and also a shame that readers fail to object to such
an untrue and unflattering portrayal. While she stops short
of calling for an outright ban on this type of fiction, she does
urge a boycott for the good of literature, society, and espe-
cially the ubiquitous Young Person.
novels
145
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english novels have for a long time—from the days of Sir
Walter Scott at least—held a very high reputation in the world, not so
much perhaps for what critics would call the highest development of
art, as for a certain sanity, wholesomeness, and cleanness unknown to
other literature of the same class. This peculiarity has had its effect, no
doubt, upon those very qualities of the national mind which produced
it. It has increased that perfect liberty of reading which is the rule in
most cultivated English houses; it has abolished the domestic Index
Expurgatorius
1
as well as all public censorship; it has made us secure
and unsuspicious in our reception of everything, or almost everything,
that comes to us in the form of print. This noble confidence has been
good for everybody concerned. It has put writers on their honour, and
saved readers from that wounding consciousness of restraint or of
danger which destroys all delicate appreciation. There are other kinds
of literature in which the darker problems of the time can be fitly
discussed, and, with a tolerably unanimous consent, English writers
have agreed to leave those subjects in their fit place. The novel, which
is the favourite reading of the young—which is one of the chief amuse-
ments of all secluded and most suffering people—which is precious to
women and unoccupied persons—has been kept by this understand-
ing, or by a natural impulse better than any understanding, to a great
degree pure from all noxious topics. That corruption which has so
fatally injured the French school of fiction has, it has been our boast,
scrupulously kept away from ours. It was something to boast of. We
might not produce the same startling effects; we might not reach the
same perfection in art, which a craftsman utterly freed of all restraints,
and treating vice and virtue with equal impartiality, may aspire to; but
we had this supreme advantage, that we were free to all classes and
feared by none. Men did not snatch the guilty volume out of sight
when any innocent creature drew nigh, or mature women lock up the
book with which they condescended to amuse themselves, as they do
in France. Our novels were family reading; and the result has been a
sense of freedom, an absence of all suggestion of evil, in the superfi-
cial studies of ordinary society, which it is impossible to overestimate.
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1
List of objection; books that are restricted or banned. 
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“Nous sommes tous d’un age mûr,” said an irreproachable French matron
to the English acquaintance whose eyes expressed a certain amaze-
ment at the frankness of some drawing-room narrative; “j’espére que vous
ne pensez pas que je parlerais comme ça devant des jeunes gens.”
1
This idea,
which is the very heart of French ideas on the subject, is quite foreign
to our insular habits. We are accustomed both to read and to speak
everything that comes in our way in the presence of jeunes gens. The
habit has so grown upon us that to change it would involve a revolu-
tion in all our domestic arrangements. It would involve us in an
amount of trouble which very few could face. We should require three
or four packets from the library instead of one. We should have the
nuisance of separating our children and dependents from our own
amusements. We should no longer be able to discuss, as we do now
continually, the books that we are reading and the thoughts we are
thinking. This is a necessity from which we have been altogether free
in the tranquil past; but it is an indulgence which only habit and the
long use and wont of public security preserve to us now.
For there can be no doubt that a singular change has passed upon
our light literature. It is not that its power has failed or its popularity
diminished—much the reverse; it is because a new impulse has been
given and a new current set in the flood of contemporary story-telling.
We will not ask whence or from whom the influence is derived. It has
been brought into being by society, and it naturally reacts upon soci-
ety. The change perhaps began at the time when Jane Eyre made what
advanced critics call her “protest” against the conventionalities in
which the world clothes itself. We have had many “protests” since that
time, but it is to be doubted how far they have been to our advantage.
The point to which we have now arrived is certainly very far from satis-
factory. The English mind is still so far borné
2
that we do not discuss
the seventh commandment with all that effusion of detail which is
common on the other side of the Channel, though even in that respect
progress is daily being made; but there are points in which we alto-
novels
147
1
“We live in a mature age; I hope you do not think that I speak like this in front of young
people.”
2
Restricted or self-restrained.
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gether outdo our French neighbours. To a French girl fresh from her
convent the novels of her own language are rigorously tabooed;
whereas we are all aware that they are the favourite reading of her
contemporary in this country, and are not unfrequently even the
production, with all their unseemly references and exhibitions of
forbidden knowledge, of young women, moved either by the wild fool-
hardiness of inexperience, or by ignorance of everything that is natu-
ral and becoming to their condition. It is painful to inquire where it
is that all those stories of bigamy and seduction, those soi-disant
1
reve-
lations of things that lie below the surface of life, come from. Such
tales might flow here and there from one morbid imagination, and
present themselves to us as moral phenomena, without casting any
stigma upon society in general; but this is not how they appear. They
have taken, as it would seem, permanent possession of all the lower
strata of light literature. Above there still remains, it is true, a purer
atmosphere, for which we may be thankful; but all our minor novel-
ists, almost without exception, are of the school called sensational.
Writers who have no genius and little talent, make up for it by display-
ing their acquaintance with the accessories and surroundings of vice,
with the means of seduction, and with what they set forth as the secret
tendencies of the heart—tendencies which, according to this inter-
pretation, all point one way. When the curate’s daughter in Shirley burst
forth into passionate lamentation over her own position and the
absence of any man whom she could marry,
2
it was a new sensation to
the world in general. That men and women should marry we had all
of us acknowledged as one of the laws of humanity; but up to the pres-
ent generation most young women had been brought up in the belief
that their own feelings on this subject should be religiously kept to
themselves. No doubt this was a conventionalism; and if a girl in a
secluded parsonage is very much in earnest about a husband, there is
no effectual reason we know of why she should not lift up her “protest”
against circumstances. But things have gone very much further since
the days of Shirley. We have grown accustomed to the reproduction,
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148
1
So-called.
2
Reference to Caroline Helstone, character in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849).
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not only of wails over female loneliness and the impossibility of find-
ing anybody to marry, but to the narrative of many thrills of feeling
much more practical and conclusive. What is held up to us as the story
of the feminine soul as it really exists underneath its conventional
coverings, is a very fleshly and unlovely record. Women driven wild
with love for the man who leads them on to desperation before he
accords that word of encouragement which carries them into the
seventh heaven; women who marry their grooms in fits of sensual
passion; women who pray their lovers to carry them off from husbands
and homes they hate; women, at the very least of it, who give and
receive burning kisses and frantic embraces, and live in a voluptuous
dream, either waiting for or brooding over the inevitable lover,—such
are the heroines who have been imported into modern fiction. “All
for love and the world well lost,” was once the motto of a simple but
perennial story, with which every human creature had a certain sympa-
thy—the romance that ended pleasantly in a wholesome wedding, or
pathetically in a violet-covered grave. But the meaning has changed
nowadays. Now it is no knight of romance riding down the forest
glades, ready for the defence and succour of all the oppressed, for
whom the dreaming maiden waits. She waits now for flesh and
muscles, for strong arms that seize her, and warm breath that thrills
her through, and a host of other physical attractions, which she indi-
cates to the world with a charming frankness. On the other side of the
picture it is, of course, the amber hair and undulating form, the warm
flesh and glowing colour, for which the youth sighs in his turn; but
were the sketch made from the man’s point of view, its openness would
at least be less repulsive. The peculiarity of it in England is, that it is
oftenest made from the woman’s side—that it is women who describe
those sensuous raptures—that this intense appreciation of flesh and
blood, this eagerness of physical sensation, is represented as the natu-
ral sentiment of English girls, and is offered to them not only as the
portrait of their own state of mind, but as their amusement and mental
food. Such a wonderful phenomenon might exist, and yet society
might be innocent of it. It might be the fault of one, or of a limited
school, and the mere fact that such ravings are found in print might
be no great argument against the purity of the age. But when it is
novels
149
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added that the class thus represented does not disown the picture—
that, on the contrary, it hangs it up in boudoir and drawing-room—
that the books which contain it circulate everywhere, and are read
everywhere, and are not contradicted—then the case becomes much
more serious. For our own part we do not believe, as some people do,
that a stratum of secret vice underlies the outward seeming of society.
Most of our neighbours, we know, are very good sort of people, and
we believe unfeignedly that our neighbours’ neighbours resemble our
own. It is possible to believe that very fine people or very shabby people
are profoundly wicked, but as for the world as represented on our own
level we know that it is not so. The girls of our acquaintance in general
are very nice girls; they do not, so far as we are aware—notwithstand-
ing a natural proclivity towards the society, when it is to be had, of their
natural companions in existence—pant for indiscriminate kisses, or
go mad for unattainable men. And yet here stands the problem which
otherwise is not to be solved. It is thus that Miss Braddon and Miss
Thomas, and a host of other writers, explain their feelings. These
ladies might not know, it is quite possible, any better. They might not
be aware how young women of good blood and good training feel.
The perplexing fact is, that the subjects of this slander make no objec-
tion to it. Protests are being raised everywhere in abundance, but
against this misrepresentation there is no protest. It seems to be
accepted by the great audience of the circulating libraries as some-
thing like the truth. Mr. Trollope’s charming girls do not, now that we
know them so well, call forth half so much notice from the press as do
the Aurora Floyds of contemporary fiction. Is, then, the picture true?
or by what extraordinary impulse is it that the feminine half of society
thus stigmatises and stultifies its own existence?
The question is one at which we may wonder, but to which we can
give no answer; and it is a very serious matter, let us look at it as we
will. It may be possible to laugh at the notion that books so entirely
worthless, so far as literary merit is concerned, should affect any
reader injuriously, though even of this we are a little doubtful; but the
fact that this new and disgusting picture of what professes to be the
female heart, comes from the hands of women, and is tacitly accepted
by them as real, is not in any way to be laughed at. Some change must
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have been wrought upon the social mind ere such things could be
tolerated at all; and even now we are not awakened out of our calm
to a full consciousness of the change. When we are so, then we will,
of course, according to our natural English course of action, take
tardy measure of precaution. We will attempt, in the face of all our
traditions and habits, to establish the Index Expurgatorius; we will
lock up the books which are not for the jeunes gens; we will glance,
ourselves, with curiosity and a sense of guilt, “just to see what it is like,”
over the objectionable portion of our library parcel, and we will make
up our minds to say nothing of it before the girls. Vain thought! If the
girls are such as they are therein described, one book or another will
do them little harm; and if the picture is false, why do they accept it?
So far from showing any difficulty on this point, it is those very books,
according to all appearances, which are most in demand. The Times
deals them the crowning glory of its approval. The critical journals,
if they do not approve, at least take the trouble to discuss; and “the
authorities at the great circulating libraries,” as somebody says—those
sublime critics who sit at the fountainhead of literature, and enlarge
or choke up at their pleasure the springs of our supply—find it impos-
sible to resist the public craving for its favourite food. Mr. Mudie,
1
too, may utter a “protest,” but it is futile in face of the protests of
fiction. We confess to having felt a sense of injury in our national
pride when our solemn contemporary, the Revue des Deux Mondes,
2
held up in one of its recent numbers the names of Miss Annie
Thomas and Mr. Edmund Yates
3
to the admiration of the world as
representative novelists of England. And yet, after all, though the
acknowledgment naturally costs us a pang, the Frenchman was right.
Such writers are purely, characteristically English. They are not bril-
liantly wicked like their French contemporaries. The consciousness
of good and evil hangs about them, a kind of literary fig-leaf, a little
better or worse than nothing. Though it is evident that the chatter of
imaginary clubs or still more imaginary studios is their highest idea
novels
151
1
Charles Edward Mudie (1818–90), proprietor of the largest and most influential circu-
lating library.
2
French literary review, published 1831–1944.
3
Edmund Yates (1831–94), English journalist and novelist.
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of social intercourse, still the guardsmen and the painters do not talk
so freely nor half so cleverly as they would have done on the other
side of the Channel. That sublime respect for sentimental morality
and poetic justice which distinguishes the British public, stands forth
in them beyond all question. The wicked people are punished and
the good people are rewarded, as they always should be; and there
are exquisite bits of pious reflection which make up to the reader for
a doubtful situation or an equivocal character. This, however, is what
we have come to in the eyes of our neighbours. It is not so serious as
the moral question, but it is in its way very serious. A critic, indeed,
may deceive himself when he looks across the mists and rains of the
Channel; but if he is guided by what English papers say—by what
advertisements say—by the evidence of circulating libraries and
publishers’ announcements—how can he judge otherwise? The
glories of the moment are in the hands of Miss Thomas and her class.
Whether it be in appreciation, or contempt, or amazement at the
extraordinary character of such successes, the fact remains that our
weekly critics never fail to say something about their productions; and
is not Maga also now beguiled to the further extension of their fame?
It is humbling, but it is true.
And the fact is all the more humbling when we consider the very
small amount of literary skill employed in the construction of these
books. In France, again, it is the other way. A wicked novel there may
be very disgusting, but it is generally clever, and sometimes possesses a
certain hideous sort of spiritual interest. When the vilest of topics
happens to fall into the hands of such an anatomist as Balzac, or under
the more human touch of Victor Hugo,
1
there is something of calm
science in the investigation—a kind of inexorable and passionless
dissection which renders even such studies impressive. But English
sensational books of the day have no such attraction. We do not gulp
down the evil in them for the sake of the admirable skill that depicts it,
or the splendour of the scenery amid which it occurs. On the contrary,
we swallow the poorest of literary drivel—sentiments that are adapted
to the atmosphere of a Surrey theatre—descriptions of society which
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152
1
Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) and Victor Hugo (1802–85), French novelists in the
new realist style.
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show the writer’s ignorance of society—style the most mean or the most
inflated—for the sake of the objectionable subjects they treat. The
novels which crowd our libraries are, for a great part, not literature at
all. Their construction show, in some cases, a certain rude skill, in some
a certain clever faculty of theft; but in none any real inventive genius;
and as for good taste, or elegance, or perception of character, these are
things that do not tell upon the sensational novel. The events are the
necessary things to consider, not the men; and thus the writer goes on
from one tour de force to another, losing even what little natural gift
might belong to him in its over-exercise, but never losing the most sweet
voices which he has once conciliated.
Such at least is the evidence of the newspapers. Rupert Godwin, for
example, the last work published by Miss Braddon, although
published only a few days, is already, according to the advertisements,
in the fourth edition.
1
Yet it would be difficult to point out one single
claim it has to popular approval. We have met with many curious
things in these lower regions of bookmaking, but it has never been
our fate to meet with any piece of literary theft so bare-faced and
impudent as this book. The story is copied in all its important partic-
ulars from Mr. Charles Reade’s well-known and powerful novel of
Hard Cash
2
—a work, we need not say, as far above the lower world into
which Rupert Godwin has been born as it is possible to conceive. The
story of Hard Cash, as everybody knows, is that of a sailor captain, who
confides his hard-won money to the care of a banker, and, being
cheated, goes mad, and is only rescued after many moving adventures
by sea and land, his wife and children in the meanwhile being left
destitute. In Rupert Godwin the conception is so far varied that the sea-
captain is stabbed, and left for dead by the wicked banker; but all the
other incidents may stand as above narrated. There are two pairs of
lovers, son and daughter of the respective banker and victim, in both
books; there is a madhouse in both books, and a clerk who betrays his
master, and a marvellous recovery for the killed and mad hero. The
only little difference is, that in one book this hero is a certain glori-
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153
1
Originally serialized as The Banker’s Secret in 1864, Rupert Godwin was published in 1867.
2
Published in 1863.
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ous sailor, dear to our hearts, noble old knight of romance, simple
old English seaman, David Dodd, altogether one of the finest concep-
tions in English fiction; and in the other a miserable ghost called
Westfield, about whom nobody knows anything nor cares anything.
How such an amount of self-confidence, or confidence in the folly of
the public, could be attained as is displayed in this publication, it
would be difficult either to explain or to understand. Mr. Reade is not
yet a classic. He is one of the most powerful of contemporary writers;
and though it may be possible to borrow with small acknowledgment
a French story, it is temerity, indeed, to plagiarise so well-known a
production. Yet this is what Miss Braddon has ventured to do. She has
taken the bones of the tale, as a poor curate might take a skeleton
sermon. Having no flesh to put upon them, it is true that, honester
so far than the curate, she leaves the bones as she found them; and,
notwithstanding a liberal mention of violet eyes and golden hair and
dark Spanish beauty, presents her personages to us in a skeleton state.
But this, it would appear, makes no difference to an admiring public.
Here is the compiler’s own account of the reception given to this
piece of stolen goods:—
Rupert Godwin was written for, and first appeared in, a cheap
weekly journal. From this source the tale was translated into the
French language, and ran as the leading story in the Journal pour
Tous. It was there discovered by an American, who retranslated
the matter back into English, and who obtained an outlet for the
new translation in the columns of the New York Mercury. These
and other versions have been made without the slightest advan-
tage to the author, or indeed without the faintest approach to
any direct communication to her on the subject. Influenced by
the facts as here stated, the author has revised the original, and
now offers the result for what it is—namely, a tale of incident,
written to amuse the short intervals of leisure which the readers
of popular periodicals can snatch from their daily avocations,
and also as a work that has not been published in England,
except in the crude and fragmentary shape already mentioned.
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The public has rewarded this noble confidence in them by consum-
ing already three editions of this much-produced tale. Three nations,
accordingly, have united in doing honour to Rupert Godwin. England,
France, and America have seized upon it with that eager appreciation
which is the best reward of genius. Most probably before this present
page has seen the light it will have been reviewed in more than one
leading journal with praise proportioned to its popularity. Was there
ever literary phenomenon more inconceivable? We stand aghast with
open mouth of wonder, and are stricken dumb before it. Miss Braddon
has, without doubt, certain literary claims. Aurora Floyd, notwithstand-
ing its unpleasant subject (though we don’t doubt that its unpleasant
subject has been in reality the cause of its great success), is a very clever
story. It is well knit together, thoroughly interesting, and full of life.
The life is certainly not of a high description, but it is genuine in its
way; and few people with any appreciation of fiction could refuse to
be attracted by a tale so well defined. The Doctor’s Wife
1
strikes even a
higher note. It is true that it is to some extent plagiarised, as was
pointed out at the time of its publication, from a French story; but the
plagiarism was so far perfectly allowable that it clearly defined wherein
the amount of license permitted by English taste differs from that
which comes natural to the French. Other books of Miss Braddon’s
have not been unworthy, to some extent, of the applause bestowed
upon them. There has been a good story now and then, a clever bit of
construction, even an inkling of character. She is the inventor of the
fair-haired demon of modern fiction. Wicked women used to be
brunettes long ago, now they are the daintiest, softest, prettiest of
blonde creatures; and this change has been wrought by Lady Audley,
and her influence on contemporary novels. She has brought in the
reign of bigamy as an interesting and fashionable crime, which no
doubt shows a certain deference to the British relish for law and order.
It goes against the seventh commandment, no doubt, but does it in a
legitimate sort of way, and is an invention which could only have been
possible to an Englishwoman knowing the attraction of impropriety,
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155
1
The Doctor’s Wife (1864) was adapted from French novelist Gustave Flaubert’s (1821–80)
Madame Bovary (1857).
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and yet loving the shelter of law. These are real results which Miss
Braddon has achieved, and we do not grudge her the glory of them;
but yet we cannot conceive how the éclat
1
of such triumphs, great as it
may be, should cover a piece of imposture. The boldness of the feat is
the only thing that does in any way redeem it; and that is not an excuse
either for literary larceny or that marvellous public credulity and folly,
which is the really alarming feature in the transaction. The author of
Rupert Godwin has compelled the world to accept not only a copy, but
a very miserable copy, by the mere form of her name. She has palmed
off upon three intelligent nations, according to her own account, a
fairy changeling, bewitched out of natural beauty into decrepitude and
ugliness, and France, England, and America have taken the imp at her
word. This is a power which the greatest of writers might envy. It is one
of the finest privileges of a great name. To have made such an impres-
sion upon your contemporaries that the whole civilised world thus
acknowledges your sway, is a thing rarely achieved even by the great-
est. But it has been achieved by Miss Braddon; and in sight of such a
climax of fame and success, what can any one say?
We feel disposed, however, to emulate to some extent that pertina-
cious critic who once, as the story goes, took upon him to annotate the
course of a sermon, by announcing the real authorship of its finest
paragraphs. “Turn that man out,” cried the aggrieved incumbent.
“That’s his own,” said the critic. In like manner there is something in
Rupert Godwin which is Miss Braddon’s own. When the poor widow’s
virtuous and lovely daughter earns her scanty living on the stage, she is
made the victim of one of those romantic abductions which used to be
so frequent (in novels) forty or fifty years ago. As it happens, it does her
no harm either in reputation or anything else, and, in short, is of little
service anyhow except to fill up so many pages; but it is purely original
and not copied. This it is only just to say. A foolish young marquess sets
his heart upon the queen of beauty in the stage tableaux, and declares
himself ready, as foolish young marquesses, our readers are aware, are
so apt to do, “to lay his coronet at her feet, and make her Marchioness
of Roxleydale”; a desire which the villain of the piece immediately seizes
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1
Stir or excitement.
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upon by way of carrying out his own vile projects. And accordingly Miss
Braddon, with a stroke of her wand, brings back out of the ancient ages
that post-chaise with the locked doors and the impassible man on the
box with which we are all so perfectly acquainted. The lovely Violet is
thus carried off to the old decayed house, with the old half-imbecile
housekeeper, whom also we know. But we are bound to say that the
young lady takes the accident with the composure becoming a young
lady of the nineteenth century. Half-way on the road, when they stop
to change horses, she satisfies herself that the pretext of her mother’s
illness, by which she has been inveigled into the carriage, is false, and
sinks back relieved, with a profound sense of gratitude to heaven. She
is rescued, as we have said, and the whole affair passes off in the calmest
way, as such a natural accident might be supposed to pass. This abduc-
tion is Miss Braddon’s own. And so is the episode of Esther Vanberg, a
ballet-girl, who dies a most exemplary death at the Star and Garter,
Richmond, after having been thrown by a wicked horse which she had
ordered her lover, a young duke, to buy for her for a thousand pounds.
The horse is bought, and runs away and breaks the reckless young
woman’s spine, and she then makes an edifying end which would
become a saint, and leaves her duke touchingly inconsolable, though
this also is utterly unconnected with the story. Esther’s beauty had been
of the demoniac order in her appearances on the stage. She inhabited
a bijou mansion in Bolton Row; her drawing-room was approached by
“a richly decorated staircase, where nymphs and satyrs in Florentine
bronze smirked and capered in the recesses of the pale grey wall,
relieved by mouldings and medallions in unburnished gold.” Tropical
flowers shaded the open windows, and the room was furnished with
amber satin. Yet all this, and the hunter worth a thousand pounds, and
circlets of diamonds, and flounces of the richest lace, all bought with
her duke’s money, seems to be considered by Miss Braddon quite
consistent with relations of the purest character between the duke and
the opera-dancer. And when she dies in this perfectly admirable way,
the duke remains a kind of spiritual widower, to carry out all the last
intentions, and build a monument over the grave of his love. In such
an ethereal and lofty way are things supposed to be managed between
young English dukes and ballet-girls. These episodes are both Miss
novels
157
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Braddon’s very own. We recognise in them the original touch of the
artist; and no doubt it is thus she has indemnified herself for giving up
her natural faculty of construction, and using somebody else’s story.
Notwithstanding the undiminished success which has attended the
essay, we cannot but think it is a pity. Honesty is the best policy. A writer
whose gift lies in the portrayal of character, in delicate touches of obser-
vation, or sketches of real life, may possibly find it practicable to take
the mere framework which has served another man; but for an author
whose sole literary gift is that of construction, it is a pity. Miss Braddon
has proved that she can invent a story. She can do it much better than
she can discriminate, or describe, or even talk; and though it may save
trouble, it is the sacrifice of her own powers she makes when she thus
borrows from another. If we could hope that it was Mr. Reade who had
done it, the matter would be very much less important; for Mr. Reade
has many gifts, and can play upon his audience as on an instrument,
and move us to tears or laughter as is permitted to very few. Miss
Braddon cannot do this; but if she can fill up the circulating library,
and be translated into French, and retranslated into American, she
certainly does owe her clientelle the exercise of her one faculty. Such
privileges have duties attached to them; and a prophet in whom the
public thus believes should at least give of her own to that believing
public. She never invented any circumstance so extraordinary as this
public faith and loyal adherence which she seems to have won.
Miss Braddon is the leader of her school, and to her the first
honours ought naturally to be given, but her disciples are many. One
of the latest of these disciples is the authoress of Cometh Up as a Flower,
1
a novel which has recently won that amount of public approval which
is conveyed by praise in the leading papers and a second edition. This
book is not a stupid book. There is a certain amount of interest and
some character in it. The young lover is, in his way, a real man—not
very brilliant certainly, nor with any pretence of intellectuality, but as
far removed as possible from the womanish individual so often
presented to us ticketed as a man in ladies’ novels; and so is the
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158
1
The actual author of this novel is Rhoda Broughton (1840–1920), but Oliphant is
under the impression that it is by Annie Thomas.
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middle-aged husband. The wonderful thing in it is the portrait of the
modern young woman as presented from her own point of view. The
last wave but one of female novelists was very feminine. Their stories
were all family stories, their troubles domestic, their women womanly
to the last degree, and their men not much less so. The present influx
of young life has changed all that. It has reinstated the injured crea-
ture Man in something like his natural character, but unfortunately
it has gone to extremes, and moulded its women on the model of
men, just as the former school moulded its men on the model of
women. The heroine of Cometh Up as a Flower is a good case in point.
She is not by any means so disagreeable, so vulgar, or so mannish, as
at the first beginning she makes herself out to be. Her flippancy, to
start with, revolts the reader, and inclines him to pitch the volume to
as great a distance from him as is practicable; but if he has patience
a little, the girl is not so bad. She is a motherless girl, brought up in
the very worst way, and formed on the most wretched model, but yet
there is a touch of nature in the headstrong creature. And this of itself
is a curious peculiarity in fiction generally. Ill-brought-up motherless
girls, left to grow anyhow, out of all feminine guardianship, have
become the ideal of the novelist. There is this advantage in them, that
benevolent female readers have the resource of saying “Remember
she had no mother,” when the heroine falls into any unusual lapse
from feminine traditions; but it is odd, to say the least of it, that this
phase of youthful life should commend itself so universally to the
female novelist.
1
•••
These are sentiments which everybody is aware a great many vulgar
clever women think it clever and striking to enunciate. The misery of
such unhappy ones as throw themselves out of the society of their own
sex, their pitiful strivings after the recognition of any stray strong-
minded woman who will look over their imperfections, should be
novels
159
1
Oliphant here quotes passages introducing the heroine and her father, and relating the
heroine’s preference for friendships with men rather than with women.
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sufficient answer to it in any serious point of view. But there is a great
deal that is unlovely which is not immoral, and false to every human
and natural sentiment without being positively wicked. This is one of
the popular bits of falsehood by which lively-minded young women are
often taken in and led to misrepresent themselves. And it is another
curious feature in second-rate women’s books. As a general rule, all
the women in these productions, except the one charming heroine,
are mean and envious creatures, pulling the exceptional beauty to
pieces. Shall we say that the women who write ought to know? But the
fact is, that a great many of the women who write live very contentedly
in the society of other women, see little else, find their audience and
highest appreciation among them, and are surrounded and backed
up and applauded by their own sex in a way which men would be very
slow to emulate. The pretence is one which only a vulgar mind could
make. The man who scorns, or pretends to scorn, women’s society, is
generally a fool; what should the woman be? But it is one of those
popular falsehoods which hosts of people repeat without in the least
meaning it. It seems to imply a certain elevation above her neighbours
of the speaker; although the very same woman, if brought to the test,
would shrink and recoil and be confounded if her silly and false aspi-
rations could be realised. Of course the patent meaning of it on the
lips of a girl like the heroine of the book before us is, that the society
she prefers is that of the man with whom she is falling in love, and who
has fallen in love with her, and that for the moment the presence of
other people is rather a bore than otherwise.
This story, as we have already said, is interesting, not because of its
particular plot or incidents, but as a sample of the kind of expression
given by modern fiction to modern sentiments from the woman’s
point of view. Nelly Lestrange has no particular objections to meet her
soldier out of doors whenever he pleases to propose it. He takes her
in his arms after he has seen her about three times, and she has still
no objection. The girl is innocent enough according to all appearance,
but she has certainly an odd way of expressing herself for a girl. She
wonders if her lover and she, when they meet in heaven, will be
“sexless passionless essences,” and says, God forbid! She speaks, when
a loveless marriage dawns upon her, of giving her shrinking body to
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the disagreeable bridegroom. There may be nothing wrong in all this,
but it is curious language, as we have said, for a girl. And here let us
pause to make a necessary discrimination. A grande passion is a thing
which has to be recognised as possible wherever it is met with in this
world. If two young people fall heartily and honestly in love with each
other, and are separated by machinations such as abound in novels,
but unfortunately are not unknown in life, and one of them is
compelled to marry somebody else, it is not unnatural, it is not revolt-
ing, that the true love unextinguished should blaze wildly up, in defi-
ance of all law, when the opportunity occurs. This is wrong, sinful,
ruinous, but it is not disgusting; whereas those speeches about shrink-
ing bodies and sexless essences are disgusting in the fullest sense of
the word. Would that the new novelist, the young beginner in the
realm of fiction, could but understand this! We will quote the last
scene—the only scene in which there is much evidence of dramatic
power in this novel. In it the poor little heroine, in her despair, flies in
the face of all right and honour and virtue, yet is not revolting, nor yet
nasty—which in her quite innocent impassioned moods, in her daring
tone, and reckless little sayings, she frequently and unpardonably is.
Everything that is worst to bear has happened to the unfortunate Nelly.
Her lover’s letters have been abstracted; she has been taught to think
him false to her; she has married for that reason, and to save her
father’s life, the unattractive Sir Hugh, and her father has died the day
after, losing to her all the comfort of her sacrifice; and then, in a
moment when she is left alone, there comes suddenly her true lover,
heartbroken with her perfidy, to look at her for the last time; and they
speak to each other, and find out how it is that they have been sepa-
rated. He is going to India, and it is their last meeting:—
1
•••
Now, this is very objectionable, no doubt, and as wrong as it can be,
but it is not disgusting. In the circumstances it is not unnatural. Great
novels
161
1
Oliphant quotes a long passage in which Nell begs to be taken along to India and her
lover refuses, on the grounds that it would risk both their salvations.
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love and despair, and the sense of an irredeemable useless sacrifice
and a horrible mistake, might excuse if they did not warrant, such an
outbreak. The difference is very clear and easily to be defined. At such
a moment the reader forgives, and his mind is not revolted by a hope-
less burst of passion, even though possible vice and the greatest of
social sins is involved in it. And there is no sin involved in the light talk
and nasty phrases which may mean nothing; yet to everybody of pure
mind it is those latter which are most disgusting. Nor is this distinction
an arbitrary one. When a human creature is under the influence of
passion, it may be moved to the wildest thoughts, the most hopeless
impulses, suggestions utterly foreign to its natural character; but its
utterance in its cooler moments expresses the ordinary tenor of life.
A woman, driven wild by the discovery of domestic fraud and great
wrong, might propose any sin in her frenzy, and yet might be inno-
cent; whereas a woman who makes uncleanly suggestions in the calm
of her ordinary talk, is a creature altogether unredeemable and
beyond the pale. This distinction is one which goes deeper than mere
criticism. It is a point upon which social literature and society itself go
much astray. When people who scarcely know each other, and do not
care for each other, are obliged to meet, the lightest of talk naturally
comes in to fill up the stray moments; and it is very handy for the novel-
ist who has many stray corners to fill up; but now and then a point of
some kind must be given to this light social froth. If not wit, which is
not always at hand, why then a little licence, a touch of nastiness—
something that will shock if not amuse. This is the abomination in the
midst of us. Perhaps the indication it would seem to give of darker evil
concealed below may be false—and we not only hope but believe that
it is false—but of itself it is the height of unloveliness.
After our free-spoken heroine has come to the climax of her fate,
she becomes consumptive and reflective after that loftily pious kind
which generally associates itself with this species of immorality; for
sensual literature and the carnal mind have a kind of piety quite to
themselves, when disappointment and incapacity come upon them.
The fire which burned so bright dies out into the most inconceivably
grey of ashes; and the sweetest submission, the tenderest purity, take
the place in a second of all those daring headstrong fancies, all that
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self-will and self-indulgence. The intense goodness follows the intense
sensuousness as by a natural law;—the same natural law, we presume,
which makes the wicked witch of romance—the woman who has
broken everybody’s heart, and spent everybody’s money, and deso-
lated everybody’s home—sink at last into the most devoted of sisters
of charity. The good women who follow the rule of St. Vincent de Paul
would be little flattered by the suggestion.
We do not feel ourselves capable of noticing, although what we have
just said recalls them to our mind, certain very fine and very nasty
books, signed with the name of a certain Ouida, it is to be supposed a
woman also.
1
They are so fine as to be unreadable, and consequently
we should hope could do little harm, the diction being too gorgeous
for merely human faculties. We note, in glancing here and there
through the luscious pages, that there is either a mass of glorious hair
lying across a man’s breast, or a lady’s white and jewelled fingers are
twined in the gentleman’s chestnut or raven curls—preferably chest-
nut; for “colour” is necessary to every such picture. Our readers will
have remarked that, even in the crisis of her misery, the poor little
heroine of Cometh Up as a Flower could not refrain from throwing her
hair in “splendid ruddy billows” over her lover’s shoulder; and the
amount of use got out of the same powerful agent in Strathmore and
Idalia seems something remarkable. Hair, indeed, in general, has
become one of the leading properties in fiction. The facility with
which it flows over the shoulders and bosoms in its owner’s vicinity is
quite extraordinary. In every emergency it is ready for use. Its quantity
and colour, and the reflections in it, and even the “fuzz,” which is its
modern peculiarity, take the place of all those pretty qualities with
which heroines used to be endowed. What need has a woman for a
soul when she has upon her head a mass of wavy gold? When a poor
creature has to be represented, her hair is said to be scanty, and of no
particular colour. Power, strength, a rich nature, a noble mind, are all
to be found embodied in this great attribute. Samson, being a Jew, had
probably black locks, which would be against him; but otherwise
novels
163
1
Pen name of Marie Louise de la Ramée (1839–1908), English novelist. Her best-known
works include Strathmore (1865) and Under Two Flags and Idalia (both 1867).
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Samson would have made a great figure in these days, if indeed Delilah
had not outdone him with amber floods of equal potency. Amber is
the tint patronised in the works of Ouida. It is the only idea that we
have been able to evolve out of her gorgeous pages, if indeed it can be
called an idea. With other and more orthodox writers the hue is gold
or red. When the conception demands a milder shade of colouring,
auburn, and even chestnut (with gold reflections), are permissible;
but when a very high effect is intended, red is the hue par excellence.
Red and gold, in all its shades, are compatible with virtue; amber
means rich luxurious vice; whereas the pale and scanty locks are the
embodiment of meanness and poverty of character. As for black and
brown, which were once favourites in fiction before it took to violent
colouring, they are “nowhere.” They may be permitted now and then
in a strictly subordinate position, but they have nothing to do with the
symbolism of modern art.
Red is the colour chosen by Mr. Edmund Yates
1
to characterise the
heroine of one of his many productions, the Margaret of Land at Last.
She has, as a matter of course, “large, deep, violet eyes,” and “long,
thick, luxuriant hair, of a deep-red, gold colour; not the poetic
‘auburn’— not the vulgar ‘carrots’—a rich metallic red, unmistakable,
admitting of no compromise, no darkening by grease or confining by
fixature—a great mass of deep-red hair, strange, weird, and oddly
beautiful.” She is picked up in the street by the artist-hero, who is
equally, as a matter of course, subjugated at once by this gorgeous
combination of colour. Margaret makes great play with her hair, like
all the other ladies. If she does not take to sweeping it over her lover’s
breast all at once, she lets it over her own shoulders “in a rich red
cloud,” which comes to the same thing; and notwithstanding that she
tells him with beautiful frankness the story of her life, into which “the
usual character—without which the drama of woman’s life is incom-
plete—a man!” had come at an early age, poor Ludlow marries her,
despite all the remonstrances of his friends. Then ensues a long and
sufficiently clever description of the failure of this red-haired heroine
to adapt herself to the dulness of a respectable life. It is very hard work
a serious occupation
164
1
Land at Last; The Forlorn Hope. [Author’s note.] Published in 1866 and 1867, respectively.
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for her, as may be supposed. When she goes to visit her dull mother-
in-law at Brompton, she sees in the Row, as she passes, faces that
remind her of her former history; people pass her in mail-phaetons
and on high-stepping horses, while she walks, who would place both
at her disposal at a word. She will not say the word, but naturally, as
she pursues her walk, she loathes her own bondage more than ever;
and in the evening, when she plays to her good, stupid, adoring
husband, dreams come upon her of the balls of other days—of “Henri
so grand in the ‘Cavalier seul,’” of the “parterre illuminated with a thou-
sand lamps glittering like fireflies, ... and then the cosy little supper,
the sparkling iced drink.” Such sublime recollections carry her far
away from the solemn quiet of Elm Lodge. And she has a baby and
hates it; and her husband loves her so much, and is so unspeakably
good to her, that she grows mad with disgust and misery. And, in short,
an awful crisis is visibly coming, and comes by the reappearance of the
man, her first love, who, it turns out was not her seducer, but her
husband. So that the wretched creature has made a victim in cold
blood of the unhappy artist—marrying him, as the villain used to
marry an unsuspecting woman in the old novels, because he was a
quite hopeless subject for any other treatment, and because she
wanted comfort and a home! The scene in which she calmly informs
Ludlow of these facts—of her utter indifference to himself and her
child, her devotion to another man, and, finally, of her previous
marriage—has considerable dramatic power, if it were not that the vile
audacity of one party, and the feebleness of the other, take from it the
interest which should belong to a death-and-life struggle. The idea is
so far original that Margaret is at no period of her career a repentant
Magdalene; and neither is she tempted by passion into her base and
treacherous crime. She marries Ludlow in cold blood for a home, with-
out any delusion on the subject, knowing that he is a good and inno-
cent man, and that she is bringing him disgrace and ruin. The best
touch in the book is the woman’s stupid ignorance and insensibility,
which leads her to imagine that she can return, as she says, to her
husband, after having been the wife of another man—a delusion out
of which she is speedily driven when the wretched reprobate to whom
she goes back turns her away with a cruelty and insensibility equal to
novels
165
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her own. So far this is true enough, and no attempt is made to clothe
vice in an attractive form; but yet it is undeniable that the author
throughout gives to his red-haired woman a lofty superiority over all
the good people in his book. She—with the rich red cloud over her
shoulders, her silence, her abstraction, the secret contrasts she is
making in her own mind between the respectable suburban life and
that of the illuminated parterres and ice drinks of her former state of
being, and the profound disgust which fills her—is evidently, in Mr.
Yates’s eyes, a creature much above the level of those dull women
whose talk is of babies. She sails about among them in sullen state, and
he feels that she is a banished angel—a creature of a higher sphere.
Her disgraceful and abominable secret, though of course he duly
punishes it, still elevates her above the dull mother and gushing sister
of her artist-husband. And when her real husband has disdainfully
spurned her, she becomes a heroine. When she is found, she makes a
little speech of self-defence, “I acknowledge my sin, and, so far as
Geoffrey Ludlow is concerned, I deeply, earnestly, repent my conduct”;
she says, “Have those who condemned me—and I know naturally
enough I am condemned by all his friends—have those who
condemned me ever known the pangs of starvation, the grim tortures
of houselessness in the streets? Have they ever known what it is to have
the iron of want and penury eating into their souls, and then to be
offered a comfortable home and an honest man’s love? If they have, I
doubt very much whether they would have refused it.” And she makes
an edifying end, watched and counselled and cared for by the model
of womanly virtue, who all this time has been saving up for poor
Ludlow. Such is the story. It is a little departure from the established
type of the golden-haired sorceress, and the author does not try to
soften her guilt by any touches of sentiment; but still it is clear that he
feels her to be a superior woman. He may praise his other personages
in words, who are contented people, making the best of their lives; but
Margaret, who makes the worst of it, and to whom respectability is
intolerable, and who dreams of cosy suppers and iced drinks, is
evidently, though be says he disapproves of her, fashioned after a much
higher ideal. Mr. Yates goes into her ways and thoughts in detail, while
he contents himself with weak plaudits of “Geoff, dear old Geoff,” from
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all the painter’s surroundings. To his taste it is evident that the wicked-
ness of the woman, her heartlessness and self-indulgence, and utter
blindness to everybody’s feelings but her own, render her profoundly
interesting; and his good women are very dull shadows by her side. We
do not forget that years ago this used to be the reproach addressed to
Mr. Thackeray, and that the cleverness of Becky and the silliness of
Amelia
1
were very favourite objects of reprobation to virtuous critics.
But Thackeray did not dwell upon Becky solely because she was
wicked. She was infinitely clever, amusing, and full of variety. The fun
in her surmounted the depravity. But at the present day this is no
longer the case. There is no sort of fun, no attraction of any sort, about
such heroines as the Margaret in Land at Last. Their interest is entirely
fictitious, and founded solely upon their wickedness. The creature is
a loathsome cheat and impostor, and therefore she is worthy of being
drawn at full length, and presented to us in all the convolutions of her
stupid and selfish nature. Such seems to be the view of fiction adopted
even by such a writer (greatly above the ordinary sensational average)
as Mr. Yates, whom, by the way, artists in general are little indebted for
the flippancy and coarseness of the picture he gives of them. Beer and
pipes are not refined accessories certainly, but yet their presence on
the scene scarcely necessitates the production of Charley Potts as the
representative painter. It is not complimentary to English art.
Another book by the same author—whose productive powers fill
us with awe and wonder—is the Forlorn Hope; in which the story turns
upon the forlorn and hopeless passion of a doctor, already married,
for a fair young patient, who returns his love. The doctor’s wife, in a
fit of tragic but only too clear-sighted jealousy, poisons herself, and
leaves him free; but the poor, pretty, consumptive Madeline, who is
the object of his love, marries somebody else just at the moment when
her physician is beginning to permit himself to think of approaching
her, and henceforward can only purchase a little intercourse with her
hopeless lover by falling very ill and dying in his hands. Now it goes
utterly against all social morality to introduce lovemaking between a
doctor and his patient. There are even hard-hearted critics who have
novels
167
1
Characters in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1847–48).
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objected to the idyll of melancholy passion as set forth in the pure
and pensive pages of Doctor Antonio,
1
notwithstanding that the scene
is Italy, and the story as spotless as imagination could conceive.
Doctors and patients have no right to fall in love with each other; it
goes in the face of all the proprieties and expediencies of life. A
young physician may, it is true, be permitted to appreciate the beauty
and excellence of the sweet nurse in a sickroom, who ministers along
with him to the sick mother or father or brother; but when she herself
becomes his patient, a wall of brass rises between them. Yet Mr. Yates’s
sympathies evidently go with the physician, and it appears only natu-
ral to him that the golden-haired patient (pale gold in this case, which
is angelic—not red gold, which is of the demons) should quite oblit-
erate in Dr. Wilmot’s mind the reserved and dark-complexioned wife
who waits for him at home. This poor woman does not right herself
even by suicide. The facts of the case give her husband, when he finds
them out, a great shock; but not so great a shock as does the marriage
of the delicate Madeline, who, angel of purity as she is, evidently feels
it quite legitimate on her part to recall her medical lover, and enact
little scenes of despairing love on her deathbed, and die happy in his
arms, with a sweet indifference to the fact of her husband’s existence.
It is no doubt very melancholy that people should obstinately persist
in marrying the wrong person, as indeed is visible in real life as well
as in novels; but how far it is expedient to call in the right man, whom
you have not married, as your medical attendant, may, we think, be
questioned. The suggestion is not a pleasant one.
As Miss Thomas has been mentioned in the beginning of this
paper, we may say, in justice to her, that she has freed herself to some
extent from the traditions of her school. Her two last books
2
are
neither immoral (to speak of), nor horsey, which is akin to immoral.
They are very frothy, and deal with a world which is not the ordinary
world around us—a world where there is either very gorgeous uphol-
stery or very shabby meanness, and no medium between them; but
still the books are not nasty. Played Out, in fact, is not a bad story. The
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168
1
Novel (1856) by Giovanni Ruffini (1807–81).
2
Played Out; Called to Account. [Author’s note.] Both published in 1867.
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little heroine Kate is very tiresome in her changeableness, but still she
is a well-known character, whom we have met so often that we feel a
certain interest in her, and indignation at the amazingly senseless way
in which her prospects are thrown away. The device by which this is
accomplished is one which is becoming about as general as the
golden hair. It is used in both Miss Thomas’s books—in Cometh Up as
a Flower—in a lively and clever novel called Archie Lovell,
1
which is a
little earlier in date—and no doubt in a host of others if we could but
remember. It is a device not very creditable either to the invention or
the good taste which suggested it. In all these books the heroines are
made to spend a night accidentally in the society of a man with whom
they have been known to flirt. It is done in the purest innocence, and
in that curious fortuitous way with which things happen only in
novels. Chance alone on both sides brings it about, but yet it becomes
known, and the consequences are generally disastrous. Kate
Lethbridge, for instance, in Played Out, is persuaded to step into a rail-
way carriage in which her friend is going off to London, and which is
supposed to wait ten minutes at a little country station, to enable him
to spend these ten minutes pleasantly. And the moment she has
entered it the train sweeps away, and the young lady’s reputation is
ruined for life. This expedient, it must be allowed, is a very poor one;
and it is a curious sign of the absence of all real inventive power in
this kind of literature, that it should be so often employed. In Called
to Account, Miss Thomas enters upon the less safe ground of married
life, and displays to us, among a number of “grandly-simple” beauties,
with the usual sublime attribute of golden locks, a scanty-haired pale-
coloured woman, who makes mischief and destroys domestic peace,
yet turns out very good at the end, and goes into the Sister of Mercy
business with much applause on all hands. Here, too, all unhappy pair
are condemned to rouse everybody’s suspicion, and to risk their char-
acter by being shut up together in a cave for some twenty-four hours
or so, though happily, as they are all but killed by the experience,
scandal is silenced. Certain curious symptoms of the kind of culture
prevalent in the region to which this class of literature belongs, are,
novels
169
1
Published in 1866.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 169
however, to be gleaned out of these books—a real contribution to our
knowledge of our species. The first of these gives us a sketch of the
favourite literature of the hero who is, like so many heroes, a man of
letters publishing novels in magazines, and otherwise contributing to
the instruction of the public. He is, besides, a clerk in a government
office, a university man, and has suddenly and unexpectedly become
heir to a fine estate. We are told to glance round his sitting-room in
his absence, with the view of throwing light upon his tastes and
pursuits—and this is what we find:—
The recesses on either side of the fireplace were occupied with
broad shelves, and these were filled with books—original
editions most of them, of the standard modern novelists. An
independent oak book-stand, placed within reach of the one
armchair in the room, might be supposed to contain the more
special favourites of that room’s occupant, and there Fielding
and Smollett, Wycherly and Ben Jonson, Spenser and Sidney,
Bon Gaultier, Bacon, Addison, Ingoldsby, and a host of other
wits, poets, essayists, dramatists, humorists, and scholars, stood
in amicable array.
Our readers will admire the admirable conjunction of names herein
assembled, and the charming way in which they relieve and heighten
each the effect of the other. Bacon and Addison leashed together, and
marching between Bon Gaultier and Ingoldsby, is a true stroke of
genius;
1
and there can be no doubt that a very peculiar light is thrown
upon the “tastes and pursuits, if not on the character of my hero,” by
the fact that his shelves are filled with the standard modern novelists in
the “original editions.” It is intelligible that people who read nothing
but standard modern novelists should produce such books as are now
under review. The second passage we shall quote is also a description
a serious occupation
170
1
Francis Bacon (1561–1626), English courtier, philosopher, and natural historian;
Joseph Addison (1672–1719), classicist and essayist; Théophile Gautier (1811–72), or
“Le Bon Théo,” French man of letters. The Ingoldsby Legends were a collection of poems
and narratives published in 1840, supposedly by “Thomas Ingoldsby” but actually by
clergyman R.H. Barham (1788–1845). 
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 170
of a room—a room which the hero—again a literary man—of Called to
Account thinks so perfect, that he never tires of raving about the exqui-
site taste which has arranged it. It must have been done by “a woman
of genius essentially human,” he says. We do not go into the parapher-
nalia of silver lamps, “shallow silver urns, classical in design and execu-
tion,” and reflected in “immense sheets of plate-glass,” but go on to its
more purely artistic features:—
On either side of these glasses were niches (oval-shaped at the
top in the wall, which was coloured a faint warm cream-colour)
containing marble statuettes about two feet high. Venus and
Hercules, Apollo and Diana, were chosen as the respective types
of beauty and strength.... In one recess by the side of the fire-
place, a small semi-oblique piano stood, with a pile of loosely
arranged music on it. In the corresponding recess there was a
ruby velvet shrine, composed of a pedestal and curtains for the
glorious goddess, who is grander and more perfect in her muti-
lated beauty than anything else the world has seen in marble, a
nearly life-size copy of “Our Lady of Milo.” ... And pictured
suggestions of the past and the future were not wanting; for
Raphael and Fornarina, Dante and his Beatrice, and a Madonna
with the warm soft beauty of a moonbeam, all looked upon one
from the walls.
This amazing combination strikes the poet-hero as half divine. Very
likely Miss Thomas imagines that the relation of the Fornarina to
Raphael, and that of Beatrice to Dante, were identical; and that it is
very fine and classical to talk of the Venus as Our Lady of Milo.
1
Such
wonderful exhibitions of the uneducated intelligence which has
novels
171
1
Oliphant criticizes Thomas for conflating profane and divine love and art. Fornarina
was the supposed mistress of Italian artist Raphael (1483–1520) and the model for his
Portrait of a Nude Woman (c. 1518); Beatrice Portinary (1266–90) was the inspiration
for Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s (1265–1321) Vita Nuova (1292) and Divine Comedy
(1314–15). Dante’s love for Beatrice was mystical and spiritual, not physical. The Venus
de Milo is a classical Greek statue in the Louvre in Paris; the statue is being inappropri-
ately compared to images of the Madonna.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 171
caught up a name here and there, and is bold enough to think it
knows what they mean, are very astonishing. Truly, a little learning is
a dangerous thing.
We have gone as far as human patience can go in our survey, and
leave off with the certainty that we have left a great deal that is more
objectionable still untouched. In one novel, which we do not attempt
to notice here, but which lately passed through our hands,
1
we
remember that the chief interest turns on the heroine’s discussion
with herself as to whether or not she will become the mistress of a very
fascinating man she happens to be brought in contact with. Her deci-
sion eventually is on the side of virtue, but she takes the whole ques-
tion into consideration with the most frank impartiality. In another
2
the central point is a certain secret passage leading from the cham-
ber of the profligate master of a house into a room occupied by an
old general and his charming young wife—a passage which the villain
uses once too often, finding himself at last in presence of the insulted
husband. But it is needless to multiply instances. It would be a task
beyond our powers to enter into all the varieties of immorality which
the novelists of the day have ingeniously woven into their stories. In
these matters the man who writes is at once more and less bold than
the woman; he may venture on positive criminality to give piquancy
to his details, but it is the female novelist who speaks the most plainly,
and whose best characters revel in a kind of innocent indecency, as
does the heroine of Cometh Up as a Flower. Not that the indecency is
always innocent; but there are cases in which it would seem the mere
utterance of a certain foolish daring—an ignorance which longs to
look knowing—a kind of immodest and indelicate innocence which
likes to play with impurity. This is the most dismal feature among all
these disagreeable phenomena. Nasty thoughts, ugly suggestions, an
imagination which prefers the unclean, is almost more appalling than
the facts of actual depravity, because it has no excuse of sudden
passion or temptation, and no visible boundary. It is a shame to
a serious occupation
172
1
Which Shall It Be? [Author’s note.] Published in 1866 by novelist Mrs. Alexander
(1825–1902).
2
Guy Deverell. [Author’s note.] Published in 1865 by Irish novelist Joseph Sheridan Le
Fanu (1814–73).
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 172
women so to write; and it is a shame to the women who read and
accept as a true representation of themselves and their ways the equiv-
ocal talk and fleshly inclinations herein attributed to them. Their
patronage of such books is in reality an adoption and acceptance of
them. It may be done in carelessness, it may be done in that mere
desire for something startling which the monotony of ordinary life is
apt to produce; but it is debasing to everybody concerned. Women’s
rights and women’s duties have had enough discussion, perhaps even
from the ridiculous point of view. We have most of us made merry
over Mr. Mill’s crotchet on the subject, and over the Dr. Marys and
Dr. Elizabeths;
1
but yet a woman has one duty of invaluable impor-
tance to her country and her race which cannot be over-estimated—
and that is the duty of being pure. There is perhaps nothing of such
vital consequence to a nation. Our female critics are fond of making
demonstrations of indignation over the different punishment given
by the world to the sin of man and that of woman in this respect. But
all philosophy notwithstanding, and leaving the religious question
untouched, there can be no possible doubt that the wickedness of
man is less ruinous, less disastrous to the world in general, than the
wickedness of woman. That is the climax of all misfortunes to the
race. One of our cleverest journals took occasion the other day to
point out the resemblance of certain superficial fashions among
ourselves to the fashions prevalent among Roman women at the time
of Rome’s downfall. The comparison, no doubt, has been made again
and again, and yet society has not become utterly depraved. But yet
it has come to have many very unlovely, very unpromising, features in
it. We are no preacher to call English ladies to account, and we have
no tragical message to deliver even had we the necessary pulpit to do
it in; but it certainly would be well if they would put a stop to nasty
novels. It would be well for literature, well for the tone of society, and
well for the young people who are growing up used to this kind of
reading. Considering how low the tone of literary excellence is, and
novels
173
1
Reference to J.S. Mill’s efforts on behalf of women’s suffrage and to Elizabeth Blackwell
(1821–1910) and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836–1917), the first women in Britain
to be certified as doctors.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 173
how little power of exciting interest exists after all in these equivocal
productions, the sacrifice would not seem a great one.
1
SOURCE
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 102 (September 1867).
SELECTED SECONDARY READING
Jay, Elisabeth. Mrs. Oliphant: A Fiction to Herself. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1995.
Williams, Merryn. Margaret Oliphant: A Critical Biography. New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1986.
Trela, D.J., ed. Margaret Oliphant: Critical Essays on a Gentle Subversive.
Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1995.
a serious occupation
174
1
In a separate column, Oliphant goes on to review favorably Anthony Trollope’s The
Claverings and The Last Chronicle of Barset (both 1867), as well as Anne Thackeray
Ritchie’s (1837–1919) The Village on the Cliff (1866).
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 174
mary elizabeth braddon (1835–1915) was born in
London of Irish parents, both of whom wrote sporadically for
periodicals, especially the Sporting News. After her parents
separated, Braddon briefly went on the provincial stage as
“Mary Seyton” to support herself and her mother. However,
she soon turned to writing, and by 1860 she was back in
London, contributing to publisher John Maxwell’s penny
magazines and soon after moving in with him. (They married
in 1874, after his estranged and institutionalized wife died.)
The next couple of years were busy ones, as she wrote for and
helped edit Maxwell’s publications and also launched her
novel-writing career, initially under a number of pseudonyms
and then under her own name. With the unprecedented
successes of Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) and Aurora Floyd
(1863), early and excellent examples of the sensational novel
subgenre, Braddon’s career was assured. She continued to
write more than 70 novels in a wide range of styles, as well as
shorter fiction and a few plays and poems.
In 1866, Maxwell and Braddon launched Belgravia, a
monthly literary magazine. Initially, at least, Braddon sought
to use her position as “conductress” of Belgravia to elevate her
literary reputation above that of mere popular novelist.
However, when she found herself under attack in other peri-
odicals, notably in Blackwood’s and the Pall Mall Gazette, she
decided to use her own magazine to fight back and to
175
A REMONSTRANCE
(NOVEMBER 1867)
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 175
denounce what she referred to in a letter to her literary
mentor, novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, as the “little carping
criticisms which teach me nothing, & indeed seem intended
only to wound & annoy” (10 October [1867]).
In “A Remonstrance,” Braddon assumes the voice of
Captain Shandon, a character in William Makepeace
Thackeray’s novel Pendennis (1848–50) who founds the Pall
Mall Gazette as a journal written “by gentlemen for gentle-
men.” In 1865, publisher George Smith and editor Frederick
Greenwood had founded an evening paper by that name, and
in 1867 the real Pall Mall Gazette accused Braddon of plagia-
rism. While the accusation related to Circe, a novel by
Braddon that was running in Belgravia under the pseudonym
Babington White (and which was admittedly based on a simi-
lar story in French), the attack was motivated more by an
ongoing feud between Maxwell and Greenwood than by any
desire to preserve literary purity. Braddon’s forceful, satirical
response to Greenwood ranges knowledgeably across histor-
ical and national boundaries to muster examples of ill-judged
literary criticism, and it demonstrates Braddon’s spirited
command of a range of rhetorical tools to defend her own
literary honour.
“All life whatsoever is but a chaos of infirmities; and whoso will
reprehend must either be a god amongst men without fault, or
a byword to men for his foul tongue.”
Captain Shandon to the Editor of the “Pall-Mall Gazette”
Sir,—When untimely death takes a man from the friends he loves and
the places that have been familiar and dear to him, his spirit still
hovers over the walks he trod in the flesh, and, from the darksome
a serious occupation
176
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 176
shore where he stalks joyless and unquiet amongst kindred ghosts, he
looks back to that busy world where he once had a place, and notes
with interest the great conflict from which he has been withdrawn.
And as the fond father, from his lonesome wanderings in the undis-
covered country, turns with looks of yearning to the children he has
left behind him, so the man of letters watches the literary bantling
from which grim death reft him, eager to see how the frail nursling
fares in stranger hands. From this land of shadows, I, Charles
Shandon, survey with looks of wonder the dealings of a class of men
whom I was once proud to call my brothers. Alas, they have changed
sadly since that day; and there are some among them now whose
hands no honest man would care to take in friendship.
The old times and the old troubles come back to me, and I fancy
myself sitting in the little room in the Fleet prison—sure ’twas pleas-
ant times we had there in those days; and it grieves me to see the place
is gone, and shabby hoardings and tawdry flaunting bills disfigure the
old walls, behind which I once found no unpleasant home. I fancy
myself sitting there, I say, with a desk on my knee, writing for dear life;
while my wife looks up from her work every now and then—poor
patient soul!—and little Mary plays with Pendennis’s watch-chain; and
noble Warrington scowls at me from under his dark thoughtful brows;
and Bungay the publisher waits impatient to hear my prospectus of
the Pall-Mall Gazette.
I’ll own, sir, I was a little proud of that prospectus; and I think of it
still with as much satisfaction as a ghost can feel in the petty triumphs
of the life that is over. It had the genuine ring; and there are not many
among your literary hacks nowadays who could write such a sentence
as that which Pendennis pronounced the crowning beauty of the
composition. “We address ourselves to the higher circles of society;
we care not to disown it. The Pall-Mall Gazette is written by gentlemen
for gentlemen; its conductors speak to the classes in which they live
and were born. The field-preacher has his journal; the radical free-
thinker has his journal—why should the gentlemen of England be
unrepresented in the Press?”
Now, sir, there was of course some little of the tradesman’s trick
and bombast in this splendid paragraph; but I protest, on my honour,
a remonstrance
177
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 177
that when I wrote it I meant to keep this promise; and I believe that
the Pall-Mall Gazette, while under my direction, rarely outstepped the
limits which a gentleman prescribes for himself even when he is most
acrimonious. The names of such contributors as Warrington and
Pendennis were, indeed, a sufficient guarantee for the carrying out
of intentions somewhat boldly put forth in my prospectus. Those two
young men were gentlemen by birth and education. We had not yet
come to the flippancy and self-conceit of the semi-educated journal-
ist. We were often bitter. We had our pet antipathies and our trade
interests; but we were always gentlemen; and when it pleased us to
hate anybody, we gave utterance to our hatred in a decent and gentle-
man-like manner.
These, sir, were the tactics of the Pall-Mall Gazette while conducted
by your humble servant.
What, sir, shall I say of it now?—Can I call it a journal written by
gentlemen for gentlemen? Not content, Mr. Editor, with having
purloined that noble sentence of which I was so justly proud, you are
doing all you have the power to do to change it into a byword and a
reproach. A journal written by gentlemen for gentlemen, quotha! A
bundle of cuttings from other papers, garnished with flippant and
frivolous comment; and little carping, spiteful paragraphs; and pruri-
ent harpings upon subjects that decency best reprobates by decent
avoidance; and sham letters from sham correspondents, all breath-
ing the same malignant feeling against some one or something
respected by other people; and, to give spice to the whole, an occa-
sional forgery.
This, sir, is the journal written by gentlemen for gentlemen, which
you conduct, and which I peruse with unutterable regret.
Now, sir, I am not going to plead the cause of a certain Mr.
Babington White, whose book you have chosen to condemn. The right
of the critic to his opinion is indisputable; whether it be the Edinburgh
Review, which is pleased to laugh at Mr. Wordsworth; or the Quarterly,
which must have its joke about young Mr. T ennyson; or the united crit-
ics of France, who band themselves together to laugh down and extin-
guish M. Hugo and the romantic school which he has inaugurated; or
the “Highflyers at Buttons,” who prefer Mr. Tickell’s Iliad to Mr. Pope’s
a serious occupation
178
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 178
popular version of the same epic;
1
—the critic for the moment is
omnipotent, the Imperator of literature, supreme in the exercises of
self-assumed and irresponsible power. But when you outstep the limits
of criticism to carry on a crusade, not against the writer of the work
you dislike, but against the Lady who conducts the Magazine in which
the work appeared, I declare that you are guilty of a paltry and
cowardly proceeding, eminently calculated to bring lasting discredit
on the journal you edit, the proprietors of which are, I fear, unaware
of the harm your foolish zeal is likely to inflict upon their property.
We will begin at the beginning, sir, if you please, and review this tilt-
ing match against a literary windmill. In the first place you criticise Mr.
White’s book, and stigmatise, as a dishonest translation, a novel,
founded on a French drama, from which source the English writer has
taken only the broad idea of his characters, and the general bearing
and moral of his story. But then he has translated about half a page of
the French writer’s dialogue, that half-page being the keynote of his
theme, and he has thus enabled you to quote a parallel passage, and
by a little clever manipulation to make it appear to your readers (who,
you speculate, are not acquainted with the French drama) that the
whole work is a mere translation, or, in your less guarded assertion, “a
novel stolen from the French.” This, sir, is a specimen of the sham-
sample system, in which the malevolent critic plagiarises the artifice of
the dishonest chapman. Mr. Babington White may boldly proclaim his
right to take his inspiration from a foreign source, as the greatest writ-
ers have done before him; and whether his book be good or bad, there
is no man of letters who will deny the justice of his plea. You have
demanded that this writer should “come forward,” or be “produced,”
for your satisfaction. Where, sir, is your pillory? Where your tribunal?
a remonstrance
179
1
Famous examples of discredited criticism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Lord Francis Jeffrey (1773–1850), editor of the Edinburgh Review, reviled Wordsworth
and other early Romantic poets; J.W. Croker (1780–1857) savaged Tennyson’s early
poetry in the Quarterly Review; Victor Hugo’s (1802–85) 1830 play Hernani sparked a
controversy between defenders in France of the neoclassical style and of the new
Romantic style that even resulted in a duel; English poets Thomas Tickell (1685–1740)
and Alexander Pope (1688–1744) both published translations of the Iliad in 1715,
setting off a literary feud between Pope and Tickell’s sponsor, critic Joseph Addison
(1672–1719).
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 179
By what right, sir, do you ask to know more of any author than the
book which it is your pleasure to review, and the name on the title-
page of that book? Mr. White may elect to claim the privilege exercised
by Junius;
1
for in the republic of letters there is no license accorded
to the greatest which does not belong to the least. If he is to be heard
of in the future, his quality will be best proved by the work which shall
bear his name: if he is to return to the obscurity from which your clam-
orous censures have lifted him, it can be no more necessary for you to
know what manner of man he is than it is necessary for him to discover
the name of that accomplished critic who, in truculence of temper and
choice of diction, resembles rather the Jeffreys of the Bloody Assize
2
than the caustic chief of the Edinburgh Review.
But now, sir, we come to a very different kind of journalism; and I
blush to find that the history of the newspaper press, like other histo-
ries, repeats itself, and that the days of the Age and the Satirist seem
to be coming back to us.
3
You receive, or in some manner become
possessed of, a letter purporting to be written by Miss Braddon—a
letter so obviously absurd, that an editor who could allow it to appear
without some previous inquiry as to its authenticity must be, indeed,
alike anxious to inflict injury and reckless of the reputation of the
journal. The letter appears, however; and the next day appears
another letter, with an anonymous signature, hinting that the book
you had condemned was not written by Mr. Babington White, but by
a popular lady novelist. And in your next impression appears a third
letter, in which a clerk’s error is twisted into an attempt at falsifica-
tion, and in which a bookbinder’s blunder is taken advantage of for
the misspelling of Mr. Babington White’s name; and from this time
forward it is to be observed that your subtle sense of humour exhibits
itself in the uniform misspelling of this writer’s name, the writing of
which with two b’s instead of one appears to you in the light of a very
a serious occupation
180
1
Reference to a collection of letters signed “Junius,” published in 1772; Junius’s identity
has never been settled, so the pseudonym has had to stand as the author of the letters.
2
As Lord Chief Justice, Lord George Jeffreys (1648–89) presided over a notorious series
of trials and executions following the defeat of the Duke of Monmouth, illegitimate son
of Charles II and a pretender to the British throne.
3
Satiric periodicals published earlier in the nineteenth century.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 180
exquisite joke, and, indeed, a complete extinction of Mr. White and
his literary pretensions; just as I have no doubt the adherents of
Richard Plantagenet thought they gave the finishing stroke to all
claims of Henry VII when they described him as “one Henry Tidder.”
1
It appears, sir, that Miss Braddon is only informed of what is going on
after the publication of the third foolish letter. She writes immedi-
ately to inform you that the letter purporting to bear her signature is
a forgery.
Now, sir, what would be the first impulse of a “gentleman” upon
discovering that by any carelessness of his he had inflicted on a lady
the serious wrong involved in the publication of a very foolish letter?
and moreover, a letter which, had the public been in any way dissat-
isfied with the Magazine she conducts—and it would appear happily
they are not—might have inflicted real trouble and annoyance upon
her in her capacity of Editor. Would not the gentleman writing for
gentlemen hasten to apologise for his unwitting furtherance of a mali-
cious plot, and would he not take immediate steps to discover the
spiteful blockhead who had put this cheat upon him? Such, sir, was
not your conduct. You positively abstain from any expression of regret
that your paper should have been made the vehicle of private malice;
and with unparalleled audacity you tell Miss Braddon that it would
better have become her to write the letter which she did not write, or,
in other words, that the malicious blockhead who forged her signa-
ture possessed a finer sense of honour than the lady herself! And
then, sir, Miss Braddon, with natural indignation, writes to offer a
reward of one hundred guineas for the discovery of the forger, and
she calls upon you to reciprocate her offer. This letter you suppress,
and this offer you ridicule. Mr. Babington White, whose only real
offence, if offence it be (?), is that he has founded an English novel-
ette on a French drama, is, you say, a far more reprehensible person
than the spiteful blockhead who forged a lady’s signature to a ridicu-
lous letter, in the hope of placing her in a false position with the
subscribers to Belgravia and the public generally.
a remonstrance
181
1
In other words, Henry Tudor, who defeated Richard III in 1485 and became the first
Tudor king.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 181
And then, sir, when the voice of the Press shouts in your ear that
your conduct is discreditable to journalism, you are goaded into a
feeble expression of being “very sorry,” and you precede this tardy
piece of repentance by asserting that you have no machinery appli-
cable to trace out the dastardly forgery. You forget, sir, that your
employer is a publisher and the owner of a rival magazine to the
Belgravia. If his signature was forged, is there no machinery by which
he would essay to discover the forger? Would he be content to do
nothing? It appears, sir, that your machinery is at the ready service of
the scoundrel who forged Miss Braddon’s signature, and that you can
print and reprint the felonious document just as your caprice dictates;
and thus your machinery can repeat the annoyance, to this it is quite
equal; but you have no machinery that will throw any light upon, or
assist in any way to drag to justice, the miscreant who deals in forgery,
and who is so conveniently on the alert for an opportunity. Whenever,
sir, your own signature—that of Frederick Greenwood, editor of the
Cornhill Magazine—shall be forged, as Miss Braddon’s has been, with
the same malicious intent to injure the Magazine you conduct, then,
no doubt, you will find some machinery to trace out the wrong-doer,
and make him amenable to the criminal law.
Your next editorial disregard of duty, sir, is worthy of all that has
gone before. The same spiteful blockhead who palmed upon you the
forged letter now imposes upon your simplicity a preposterous adver-
tisement, published in a Utrecht paper on Thursday September
26th;
1
and this absurdity, without any authentication or guarantee,
you quote and comment upon in your journal of Saturday the 28th.
Sharp work, this Mr. Editor, and suggestive too! It is not difficult for
the conspirator who inserted the advertisement to contrive to give
notice of its appearance in anticipation of the ordinary postal deliv-
ery; and it is a fact not generally known, that a newspaper published
in Utrecht on Thursday does not reach the General Post-office in
a serious occupation
182
1
The Editor of the paper refuses, in his issue for October 15, to state from whom he
received this mendacious advertisement, and he declines to give any aid to trace the
anonymous concoction. It is hoped, however, that either the Burgomaster of Utrecht,
or the solicitor to her Majesty’s Consul at Amsterdam, will eventually unravel this
unprincipled sequence to the forgery of Miss Braddon’s name. [Author’s note.]
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 182
London until Saturday. But what can I say of the editor who uncon-
sciously lends himself to so pitiful an affair! And the cause of all this
plotting and counter-plotting, the forgery, the anonymous letters, the
spurious advertisement from a Dutch newspaper, the wilful suppres-
sion of Miss Braddon’s letters, is to show—what? Only that Mr.
Babington White derived the characters in his story from a French
drama, and did not consider himself bound to blazon the fact upon
his title-page any more than William Makepeace Thackeray consid-
ered himself bound to tell the world that he derived the broad idea
of his wonderful Becky Sharp, with her tricks and lies and fascina-
tions, and elderly adorer, and sheepdog companion, from the
Madame de Marneffe of Honoré de Balzac;
1
or any more than that
great writer’s accomplished daughter is bound to proclaim that the
pre-Raphaelite word-painting for which she has been so highly
commended is a trick of style exactly identical with, if not directly
derived from, the style of Gustave Flaubert.
2
Why, sir, if you better knew the literature you profess to represent,
you would better understand the silliness of this childish outcry; you
would know that Le Sage borrowed the plan of his Diable Boiteux from
the Spanish of Guevara, and that he derived the materials of Gil Blas
from the Spanish drama;
3
you would know that, without acknowl-
edgment or sense of compunction, Sterne took whole pages verbatim
from Rabelais, and helped himself with a very free hand to the gems
of erudition and quaint conceits which he found in Burton’s Anatomy
of Melancholy;
4
you would know that Molière, in a notorious sentence,
confessed to taking his material wherever he found it.
5
I daresay the
a remonstrance
183
1
Character in French novelist Honoré de Balzac’s (1799–1850) Cousin Bette.
2
Reference to novelist and essayist Anne Thackeray Ritchie (1837–1919), whom
Braddon compares to French realist novelist Gustave Flaubert (1821–80).
3
French dramatist and novelist Alain-René Le Sage (1668–1747) based his novel Le
Diable Boiteux on a story by Spanish writer Luis Vélez de Guevara (1579–1644), but Gil
Blas is now generally accepted to be a completely original work.
4
English novelist Laurence Sterne (1713–68), whose best-known work is an early stream-
of-consciousness style novel, Tristram Shandy (1760–67); among Sterne’s acknowledged
influences are the comic works of the French writer François Rabelais (1490–1553),
and English writer Robert Burton’s (1577–1640) sprawling philosophical treatise The
Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).
5
Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin (1622–73), French playwright.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 183
little carping critics of Grub-street had their fling at the Yorkshire
parson who wrote Tristram Shandy—the chief characters of which, by
the way, Lord Lytton reproduced, regenerated, and ennobled in his
immortal Caxtons.
1
Yet who protests? who dare to shout “literary thief”
here? No doubt Vadius and Trissotin
2
found plenty to say about the
dishonesty of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, alias Molière. And yet, sir, I
would rather have an ounce of Molière’s genius, or a pennyweight of
Laurence Sterne’s wit, than a pound of your honesty, marketable as
the commodity may be; or of that keen sense of honour which permit-
ted you to record the experiences of a spy who did not disdain to
misrepresent himself as a “man on strike,” and who did not scruple
to hob and nob with the deceived journeymen tailors, in order to give
the world at large, and the master tailors in particular, the benefit of
knowledge obtained by that petty treason.
3
I doubt, sir, if you know how much you promised when you so boldly
appropriated the best sentence in my prospectus. A journal written by
gentlemen for gentlemen! Have you any idea what that implies? and can
you for a moment imagine that gentlemen write, or that gentlemen care
to read, such stuff as you have written, or caused to be written, upon this
Babington-White question? Is it the part of a gentleman to deal in impu-
tations that he cannot maintain, to give ear to the backstairs gossip of a
printing-office, or take his crude information from some underhand
source, and then, after making his charge by means of hints and innu-
endoes, to suppress the letter that calls upon him to substantiate his
accusation? Is it the part of a gentleman to war against a woman, or to
give ridiculous prominence to an insignificant matter in order to injure
a trade rival? No, sir: if ever you are so happy as to fall into the society of
gentlemen, you will discover that urbanity is the distinguishing mark of
a gentleman’s conduct; and that a courteous reverence for
womankind—whether it be my Lady Mary in her chariot going to St.
James’s Palace in all her glory of diamonds and court-plumes, or only
a serious occupation
184
1
Novel by Braddon’s literary mentor, Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–73), later first Baron
Lytton.
2
Characters in Molière’s play The Learned Ladies; both characters are writers.
3
Reference to activities leading up the 1866 establishment of a national journeyman
tailors’ union.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 184
poor Molly the housemaid scrubbing her master’s door-step—is a senti-
ment at once innate and inextinguishable in a gentleman’s mind.
Go to school, Mr. Editor, and learn what it is to be a gentleman.
Learn of Addison and Steele, whose papers are models of all that is
gentle and gentlemanly in literature.
1
Observe with how light a rod
those elegant writers chastise the follies of their age. Remark how
wide their sympathies, how inexhaustible their good humour, how
dignified their sarcasm, how polished their wit. And understand from
these qualities how it happened that those papers, designed for the
amusement of an idle hour in the day that gave them to the town,
have become the standard of taste in journalism, and the delight of
intellectual mankind. Learn of Jeffrey and of Brougham,
2
those
masters of critical sword-play, who had no need to fall to fisticuffs, like
dirty little boys in the gutter, in order to belabour the object of their
antipathy. Those gentlemen, sir, were the high-priests of literature:
they offered up their victim with something of the solemnity attend-
ing a pious sacrifice; and, as the leper-priest of the mediaeval legend
felt his leprosy leave him at the moment when he offered the supreme
sacrifice, so these masters of the art of criticism banished from their
minds all party spirit and all personal feeling while engaged in the
performance of their self-assumed function. Above all, sir, study the
writings of William Makepeace Thackeray, from whose great mind
you derived the title which your mistaken policy has so degraded.
As for the Lady whom you have attacked, I do not think she need fear
any ill results from your malevolence. Adverse criticism loses its power
to sting from the moment in which it ceases to be disinterested. Do you
think the friends and readers of Alexander Pope valued his genius any
the less after reading the libels of Lord Hervey?
3
No, sir; they only
a remonstrance
185
1
The Tatler (1709–11) and the Spectator (1711–12), written by Addison and Irish drama-
tist Richard Steele (1672–1729), served as models of tasteful periodical literature for
their own and subsequent generations.
2
Lord Henry Brougham (1778–1868), journalist and politician. Brougham was one of
the founders of the prestigious Edinburgh Review.
3
Lord John Hervey (1696–1743), poet and vice chamberlain under Queen Caroline,
along with poet Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1767), engaged in a long-running
literary feud with Pope. Hervey’s Letters from a Nobleman at Hampton Court (1733) attacks
Pope’s humble origins and physical deformities.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 185
thought that my lord hated the poet very furiously, and expressed his
antipathy in very poor and feeble language. The town may possibly have
derived some small entertainment from the Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity
from a Nobleman at Hampton Court; but the lordling’s silly rhymes can have
robbed the poet of no single admirer. Miss Braddon, I imagine, has no
higher aspiration than to please that novel-reading public which has
hitherto applauded and encouraged her efforts to amuse its leisure
hours; and I am sure her readers will not withdraw their support from
her because she has been made the subject of a most unmanly attack in
a journal which professes to be written by gentlemen for gentlemen.
The English mind, sir, is quick to resent anything that savours of perse-
cution; and if you have the interests of your paper at heart, you will do
well in future to refrain from these noisy onslaughts upon popular
female novelists; which are more characteristic of the disappointed
author of two or three unappreciated novels than of the gentleman
editor who writes for gentlemen readers.
I have the honour to be, sir,
Your predecessor and humble servant,
Charles Shandon.
Hades, October 1867.
SOURCE
Belgravia 4 (November 1867).
SELECTED SECONDARY READING
Carnell, Jennifer. The Literary Lives of Mary Elizabeth Braddon: A Study
of Her Life and Work. Hastings: Sensation Press, 2000.
Robinson, Solveig C. “Editing Belgravia: M.E. Braddon’s Defense of
‘Light Literature.’” Victorian Periodicals Review 28.2 (1995): 109–22.
Wolff, Robert Lee. “Devoted Disciple: The Letters of Mary Elizabeth
Braddon to Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1862–1873.” Harvard
Library Bulletin 22.1 (1974): 1–35; 22.2 (1974): 129–61.
Wolff, Robert Lee. Sensational Victorian: The Life and Fiction of Mary
Elizabeth Braddon. New York: Garland, 1979.
a serious occupation
186
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anne mozley (1809–91) was born in Gainsborough and
grew up in Derby, one of 12 children in a family that made
notable contributions to publishing and journalism. Her
father was a bookseller and publisher, and two brothers
carried on the family business. Her mother supervised the
children’s rigorous educations: the boys were educated at
various grammar schools and at Charterhouse, while the girls
were educated at home by governesses and masters. Anne
later lauded the benefits of being continually exposed to seri-
ous adult conversation during her childhood.
Three of the Mozley sons went to Oxford, and Thomas and
James formed especially close associations with the leaders of the
Oxford Movement, John Henry Newman and Edward Pusey.
Thomas and an elder brother John married Newman’s sisters
Harriet (a minor novelist) and Jemima. These close collegial and
family ties proved important to Anne’s literary career. Not only
did her brother James’s ten-year editorship of the Christian
Remembrancer provide her an entrée for reviews and articles, but
Newman chose her to edit his Letters and Correspondence, which
were published in 1891, the year of her death.
Mozley built a solid reputation as a reviewer and editor,
contributing to Bentley’s Quarterly Review, as well as the presti-
gious Saturday Review and Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.
Selections of her essays from the latter two periodicals were reis-
sued anonymously as Essays on Social Subjects (1868) and Essays
187
ON FICTION AS AN EDUCATOR
(OCTOBER 1870)
Anne Mozley
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 187
from Blackwood (1892). In addition to editing Newman’s and her
brother James’s letters, she also edited a number of religious
poetry anthologies in the 1830s and 1840s. From 1842 on, she
edited the children’s periodical Magazine for the Young, where
one of her contributors was Charlotte Yonge, who would herself
go on to edit the long-running children’s magazine Monthly
Packet. Mozley’s literary work tapered off in the 1880s as she,
like her brother Thomas, gradually lost her eyesight.
“On Fiction as an Educator” originally appeared in Blackwood’s,
and it addresses the perennial question of the value of didactic
versus aesthetic literature. Citing examples from the lives of great
writers, Mozley builds a compelling case that it is imaginative
literature that ignites the sparks of genius in children. “Early
childhood,” she claims, “is the time when wonder, curiosity,
expectation, susceptibility, and pleasure itself, are separate from
personal consciousness.” Didactic literature, especially that writ-
ten specifically for children, can “work no wonders of this kind”
because it does not challenge children to expand beyond their
own experiences and knowledge.
While Mozley initially concerns herself only with the educa-
tion and experiences of boys, towards the end of the essay she
explicitly considers the education of girls as well. Since few
girls could gain access to the kinds of systematic education
touted for boys—and even fewer “women of acknowledged
genius” had the benefit of such education—Mozley notes that
fiction, including drama, must play an even more important
role for women in providing “the awakening touch” of self-
awareness and love of learning.
we believe that every one who reads at all, every one to
whom books were anything in childhood—and it may be taken for
granted that all readers in manhood were readers in childhood—
every man who ever took up a book for his diversion, can look back
to some particular book as an event in his inner history; can trace to
a serious occupation
188
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 188
it a start in thought, an impulse directing the mind in channels
unknown before, but since familiar and part of his very being. He
perhaps wonders how the book, being such as it is, should have
wrought such marvels, but of the fact he cannot doubt: he was differ-
ent after reading it from what he was before; his mind was opened by
it, his interests widened, his views extended, his sense of life quick-
ened. And he will surely find that the book thus influential came to
him by a sort of chance, through no act of authority or intention. He
seemed to find it for himself: it was a discovery. His teachers had
surrounded him with books, whether of instruction or amusement,
suited to his dawning faculties; but to these, however well adapted to
their purpose, he can trace no conscious signal obligation. No doubt
he owes much to them, but the methods and processes are lost. As far
as his mind is stored and cultivated they have an important share in
the work: but his memory is treacherous as to individual services.
They are associated with the routine of duty, when the fancy is hard
to enlist. Because they were suited there was nothing to startle.
Books are founders of families as well as men—not meaning the
great books, the folios that overshadow the world of thought and
teach ages and generations to write and think with a family likeness—
the Aristotles, Augustines, Bacons,
1
and so forth; but books of infi-
nitely less weight, composed under certain conditions of fervour and
vivacity. For we take it that no book gives the start we mean, let who
will be the author, which was not composed in heat of spirit to satisfy
a necessity for expression, and with vigour of execution.
It may be granted that of all reading novel-reading, as usually
performed, is the slightest of intellectual exercises—one that may be
discontinued with least perceptive loss to the understanding. As we view
the enormous amount of novels issuing from the press, it can be said of
few that any of the readers for whom they are expressly written are mate-
rially the better for them. A chat with a neighbour, or a nap, or a game
at bezique
2
would fulfil every purpose they effect on the jaded, hack-
on fiction as an educator
189
1
Aristotle (384–322 BC), Greek philosopher; Augustine (AD 354–430), saint and philoso-
pher of the early Christian church; Francis Bacon (1561–1626), English philosopher.
2
French card game.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 189
neyed attention. Any one of the three modes of passing an hour would
leave as lasting an impression as the average serial manufactured for the
monthly demand by even fairly skilful hands—that is, on the mind famil-
iar with such productions. Yet to judge by the autobiography of genius,
the novel plays a part second to none—we might almost say, the fore-
most part—in the awakening of its powers. It is a point on which
memory and present observation are not only not agreed, but strangely
and absolutely at odds. There is no comparison between the novel of
recollection and the novel of to-day. We do not mean in literary merit,
but in the sway and telling power on the reader. Who can forget his first
novel? the tale that entranced his childhood, introducing him to those
supreme ideas of hero and heroine; opening a new world to him—not
the nursery, school-room, play-ground world, but a veritable field of
cloth of gold, of beauty, achievement, adventure, great deeds, success!
He reads the story now, and wonders where its power lay—that is, unless
his lucky star threw some masterpiece in his way, such as Ivanhoe,
entrancing to childhood, and still delightful at every age. But this is a
chance. The exquisite vision of life may have come in the shape of a clas-
sical story—the action is stilted to his mature taste, the language turgid.
Or in a tale of chivalry, he can only laugh now at impossible feats of hero-
ism. It may have been an historical romance, such as Thaddeus of
Warsaw,
1
which Thackeray harps upon: the whole thing strikes him as
at once false and dull. It may have been a tale of passion, flimsy to his
mature judgment, though the author’s heart was in it. His mind can
scarcely, by an effort, revive even a faint echo of the old absorbing excite-
ment; but not the less is he sensible of a lasting influence—a permanent
impression, following upon the first enchantment.
Who that has felt it but will class such hours among the marked
ones of his life? what a passionate necessity to unravel the plot, to
pursue the hero in his course; what a craving for the next volume,
stronger than any bodily appetite; what exultation in success; what
suspense when the crisis nears; what pity and tears in the tragic
moments; what shame in these tears—the shame that attends all
strong emotions—as they are detected by unsympathising, quizzing
a serious occupation
190
1
Novel (1803) by English novelist Jane Porter (1776–1850).
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 190
observers; shame leading to indignant protesting, pertinacious
denials, haunting the conscience still, and deceiving no one! What a
blank when the last leaf is turned, and all is over!
Who cannot contrast the weariness with which he now tosses the
last novel aside, with the eager devices of his childhood to elude
pursuit and discovery, to get out of earshot, or to turn a deaf ear, when
the delightful book is in his grasp which is to usher him into another
world? What ingenuity in hiding, behind hedges, in out-houses and
garrets—nay, amongst the beams and rafters of the roof, to which
neither nurse nor governess, nor mamma herself, has ever pene-
trated. Even the appearance of the book devoured under these
circumstances lives a vivid memory—torn page, thumb-marks, and all.
But it is the way of such things to disappear when their mission is
accomplished—to elude all search; though for some we would will-
ingly give as much as ever book-hunter did for a rare pamphlet.
If it were possible, as has been more than once attempted, by a
system of rigorous and vigilant exclusion, to confine an intelligent
child’s education within certain exactly defined limits—to impart what
is called an admirable grounding in all exact knowledge, and at the
same time to shut out every form of fiction from its mind—to allow it
to receive no impressions through the fancy—to compel its powers of
thought and perception into one prescribed direction—to suffer it to
read and hear nothing but fact, to imbibe nothing but what is called
useful knowledge, to receive its history purified of all legend, its gram-
mar without illustration, its arithmetic without supposed cases, its reli-
gion through direct precept only,—and to compare it with another
child of equal age and powers, which had learnt nothing laboriously,
nothing but through unrestricted observation and the free use of its
senses—knowing nothing that lessons teach, reading, if it could read,
only for amusement,—but familiar from infancy with legendary lore,
fairy tales, and the floating romances of social life,—some interesting
conclusions might be drawn. As the first case is an impossible one, we
can only surmise which mind would be most developed, which would
be possessed of the truest, because most clearly and largely appre-
hended knowledge. Either system is mischievous followed out to its full
length: these victims of experiment or neglect would each be wanting,
on fiction as an educator
191
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 191
perhaps permanently, in supremely important elements of intellectual
power; but there is no doubt what would be the voice of experience as
the extent of loss where the higher faculties are in question. All the
men of genius who tell us anything of themselves give it—whether
intentionally or not—in favour of feeding and exciting the imagination
from the first dawn of thought, as a condition of quickening that faculty
in time, and sustaining the human race at a due elevation.
1
There are
indeed dry men, who are satisfied with the restrictive system which
made them what they are, by stopping some of the mind’s outlets for
good and all; while Fancy’s child, on the contrary, is often painfully
conscious of something missing, some strength needed to carry out the
brain’s conceptions: but satisfaction with an intellectual status is no
warrant for its justice. The poet has both types in his thought when he
pictures the model child, the growth of the system of his day, as
A miracle of scientific lore.
Ships he can guide across the pathless sea,
And tell you all their cunning: he can read
The inside of the earth, and spell the stars;
He knows the policies of foreign lands;
Can string you names of districts, cities, towns,
The whole world over, tight as beads of dew
Upon a gossamer thread; he sifts, he weighs;
All things are put to question; he must live
Knowing that he grows wiser every day
Or else not live at all, and seeing too
Each drop of wisdom as it falls
Into the dimpling cistern of his heart;
2
a serious occupation
192
1
Bearing upon our subject is a well-considered lecture recently delivered and since
published by Lord Neaves on Fiction as a Means of Popular Teaching. The line of thought
leads him chiefly to dwell on the value of parable and fable as moral teachers for all
time and every age. His numerous examples in prose and spirited verse are not only apt
and varied, but show a familiar acquaintance with the literature, both European and
Oriental, of the subject. [Author’s note.] Lord Neaves (1800–76) was a classicist who
became rector of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland; the lecture Mozley cites was
delivered and published in 1869.
2
These and the other long poetry excerpts are from Wordsworth’s Prelude.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 192
and contrasts the little prig with the child expatiating, all unconscious
of self, in the free range of fiction and fairy-land. It is thus Wordsworth
congratulates Coleridge on their mutual escape:—
Oh! where had been the man? the poet where?—
Where had we been, we two, beloved friend,
If in the season of unperilous choice,
In lieu of wandering, as we did, through vales
Rich with indigenous produce, open ground
Of fancy, happy pastures ranged at will,
We had been followed, hourly watched, and noosed,
Each in his several melancholy walk;
Stringed, like a poor man’s heifer, at its feed,
Led through the lanes in forlorn servitude;
Or rather like a stallèd ox, debarred
From touch of growing grass, that may not taste
A flower till it have yielded up its sweets
A prelibation to the mower’s scythe?
It is common, however, for men of genius to complain in their own
case of a defective intermittent education in a tone which gives it for
elaborate training; it is their grievance against their special belong-
ings or against society generally. They assume their imagination a
giant no chains could have bound; while exacter, more varied, and
deeper knowledge would have added strength and power to their
crowning faculty. We discover this querulous humility in men who
have acquired distinction; to whom, therefore, the world allows the
privilege of talking at themselves. They are aware of inequalities, and
perhaps feel themselves pulled back by deficiencies which would not
have disturbed them had their education been more regular and
systematic at some early period than they were left to themselves, and
allowed to follow their own devices. Under the desired circumstances
their powers would have been more on a level. This is probable, but
the level might be attained through the checked exuberance of their
highest and most distinguishing faculty; a sacrifice they would be little
prepared for, though the average of capability might be raised.
on fiction as an educator
193
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 193
Mr . Galton,
1
in his work on hereditary genius, asserts genius to be irre-
pressible. To us it seems, like all other kindling matter, to need a spark;
and whatever is not inherent, but imparted, may be wanting. It may be
wanting either through abject circumstances, or effectual repression in
childhood, the period when the divine touch is given—given in some
moment of careless leisure, through the medium of delight, using fancy
for its ministrant. There is a critical moment in childhood when it is open
to impressions with a keener apprehension than at any other period of
existence. Scenes and images strike on the dawning mind, and elicit a
flash of recognition, which later on in life, and taken in through gradual
processes, would effect no such marvel. It is perhaps when the first
glimpse of the possibilities of life falls on a just-awakening intelligence
that the light is caught most readily, and tells most lastingly on the intel-
lect. The idea must not only interest, it must be new—something hith-
erto undreamt of. A child’s first apprehension of poetic fiction is a
revelation,—fiction, that is, that either tells something absolutely new,
like the heroic aspect of life—great deeds and wonderful adventures—
or which gives an insight into the passions, the stir, and excitement of
manhood. Nothing written for children can produce this commotion in
the whole nature; it must be something absolutely out of the sphere of
experience, representing life in a new and wonderful aspect, of which
before there was no conception, and which yet is recognised at once for
truth. And, as we have said, it must be come upon by accident and at
unawares. There is fiction, noble fiction, in all classical training; but men
don’t look back upon their lessons for the moment of illumination we
speak of. Probably it has come before to them; for early childhood is the
time when wonder, curiosity, expectation, susceptibility, and pleasure
itself, are separate from personal consciousness. It is when a child is lost
in a book or heroic tale, to the utter forgetfulness of self, that the germ
springs into life. The poet is made as well as born. It is here that the
making begins. Walter Scott had received his bent at three years old, long
before he could read, when he shouted the ballad of Hardyknute to the
annoyance of his aunt Janet’s old bachelor visitors.
2
a serious occupation
194
1
Francis Galton (1822–1911), English scientist; his Hereditary Genius appeared in 1869.
2
According to his biographer John Lockhart, Scott claimed the ballad of “Hardyknute”
was the first poem he ever learned.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 194
Children’s tales of the moral sort, however well told, and however
valuable for safe reading and innocent amusement, work no wonders of
this kind. A child’s story deliberately treats of matters with which the child
is familiar; all the grown-up characters are drawn from his point of view.
Miss Edgeworth wrote thing better than “Simple Susan,”
1
but it touches
on no new ground. No one looks back upon it as a starting-point of
thought. Still less influential in this direction are those that draw society;
that bring boys and girls together , and make them talk and act upon one
another as it is supposed that boys and girls do act. At best, a child learns
appropriate lessons for its own conduct from them. Miss Sewell’s valu-
able tales on the one hand, and Tom Brown on the other,
2
open out no
vision of life; they are not of the fiction that sows the seeds we mean,
though they induce swarms of imitators amongst their older readers and
admirers: no doubt, for one reason, that a child’s criticism, its question-
ing satirical temper, is at once roused—the posture of mind least akin to
inspiration. In the domestic tale there is a constant appeal to the proba-
ble. Here the child cannot but feel as a judge. It has quick sight to detect
bombast and want of nature, which might have passed current in unfa-
miliar scenes, and enacted by men and women. And because verse is
more out of the range of a child’s critical judgment than prose, and a tale
sung is lifted into a higher region than a tale said, we find romance in
harmonious numbers take the first place as instigator and stimulant to
the latent spark of genius. How much of our poetry, for instance, owes
its start to Spenser! when the Fairy Queen
3
was a household book, and lay
on the parlour window-seat! Before the drawing-room table had a liter-
ary existence, the window-seat fulfilled its function as the home for the
light literature of the day. The parlour window was the form of popular-
ity Montaigne
4
affected to despise and dread for his essays, as placing
him within everybody’s reach—not of critics only. Clearly the window-
seat was better adapted for the explorations of childhood than its
modern substitute, as being easily climbed into, more snug and retired,
on fiction as an educator
195
1
Children’s story (1800) by English novelist Maria Edgeworth (1767–1849).
2
Anna Sewell (1820–78), English writer of moral tales for children; Tom Brown’s
Schooldays (1857) by Thomas Hughes (1822–96)
3
Edmund Spenser (1552–99), English poet whose best-known work is The Faerie Queene
(1590–96).
4
Michel de Montaigne (1533–92), French philosopher.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 195
a miniature study, in fact, presenting a hiding-place from curious
observers behind the curtain; and the window itself, a ready resource for
wandering eyes, when the labour of reading, of attention, even of excite-
ment, demanded a pause. “In the window of his mother’s apartment lay
Spenser’s Fairy Queen,” writes Johnson of Cowley,
1
“in which he very early
took delight to read, till, by feeling the charms of verse, he became, as he
relates, irrecoverably a poet. Such are the accidents,” he goes on to say,
“which, sometimes remembered, and perhaps sometimes forgotten,
produce that particular designation of mind and propensity for some
certain science or employment which is commonly called genius.” With
his self-chosen studies Cowley acquired that disinclination for the asper-
ities of a formal education which mature genius so often laments, “and
he became such an enemy to all constraint, that his master never could
prevail on him to learn the rules of grammar .” Pope
2
says, “I read the Fairy
Queen with infinite delight at twelve.” Dryden
3
calls Milton the poetical
son of Spenser; and all recent biography gives to Spenser the same pre-
eminence as a prompter of the nation’s genius. And this not only because
the flow of his verse and his charm of narrative naturally attract children,
but that the brilliancy and the strangeness and the utter difference
between life as he draws it, and life as the child knows it, especially qual-
ifies it for the work. The Fairy Queen does not so much suggest imitation
as other poems do of equal power, but it awakes a faculty. The poets
adduced never followed their first teacher; they caught nothing from him
but the impulse—the flash. Another remarkable and eventful impulse of
the same nature, and for the same reason, was the publication of the
Arabian Nights,
4
awaking power without give its direction. To this
Wordsworth testifies:—
Dumb yearnings, hidden appetites are ours,
And they must have their food ....
a serious occupation
196
1
Abraham Cowley (1618–67), English poet, dramatist, and essayist; he was included in
Samuel Johnson’s (1709–84) Lives of the English Poets (1779).
2
Alexander Pope (1688–1744), English poet.
3
John Dryden (1631–1700), English poet.
4
The Arabian Nights (1850) were translated into English by explorer Richard Francis
Burton (1821–90).
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 196
In that dubious hour,
That twilight when we first begin to see
This dawning earth, to recognise, expect,
And in the long probation that ensues
The time of trial, ere we learn to live
In reconcilement with our stinted powers.
... Oh! then we feel, we feel,
We know where we have friends. Ye dreamers then,
Forgers of daring tales! We bless you then,
Imposters, drivellers, dotards, as the ape
Philosophy will call you; then we feel
With what, and how great might ye are in league,
Who make our wish, our power, our thought a deed,
An empire, a possession,—ye whom time
And seasons serve; all faculties to whom
Earth crouches, the elements are potter’s clay,
Space like a heaven filled up with northern lights
Here, nowhere, there, and everywhere at once:
and Dr. Newman,
1
in his recollections of early childhood, writes: “I
used to wish the Arabian Tales were true; my imagination ran on
unknown influences, on magical powers and talismans .... I thought
life might be a dream, or I an angel, and all this world a deception,
my fellow-angels by a playful device concealing themselves from me,
and deceiving me with the semblance of a material world.”
Dryden gives it as his opinion that “it is the genius of our country-
men to improve upon an invention rather than to invent themselves”;
and though he is speaking of the obligations of our earlier English
poets to Italian sources, rather than of the mission of Oriental fancy to
help Western imagination to the use of its wings, yet his argument takes
that direction, and shows the necessity of a first impulse from without
in opposition to the irrepressible theory lately put forth. No doubt a
work of far less decided force of invention falling on a kindred fancy
on fiction as an educator
197
1
John Henry Newman (1801–90), English writer on religion and education; later a cardi-
nal in the Roman Catholic Church.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 197
effects the same purpose. We have always regarded the Autobiography of
David Copperfield as in some points imaging Charles Dickens’s own early
experiences. When his hero amuses Steerforth at school with repeti-
tions of his early novel-readings, we doubt not they were the tales that
had impressed the author’s own childhood, and given the bent to his
genius. When little Copperfield pays his first visit to Mr. Micawber in
the Marshalsea, and recalls on his way Roderick Random’s
1
consign-
ment to that dreary prison, and there encountering a debtor whose
only covering was a blanket, it was probably the recollection of a simi-
lar vivid startling impression on his own feelings which made the
humours of prison-life at all times a congenial subject for his pen.
Curiously illustrating this view is Cobbett’s
2
history of what he calls
his intellect. Cobbett’s was certainly an irrepressible character; but
the intellect which gave such weight and impetus to it needed an
awakening which, except for an accident, might not have happened
in childhood—the age essential for its full development. And unless
Swift
3
had chosen to express himself through the medium of fiction
(so to call it), his mind, however congenial with Cobbett’s, would
never have come in contact with it at the impressible period, and
probably never at all. It is one of the main gifts of influence to know
the right means to an end, and Swift knew invention to be his means,
saying, “In my disposure of employments of the brain, I have thought
fit to make invention the master, and to give method and reason the
office of its lackeys.”
4
•••
Who can tell how much Cobbett’s admirable style, so remarkable
in a self-educated man, turned upon an early acquaintance with such
a model? The choice and collocation of words owe much to early
preference, and the rhythm which first charms the ear.
a serious occupation
198
1
Character in novel by Irish novelist Tobias Smollett (1721–71).
2
William Cobbett (1763–1835), English journalist and political activist.
3
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), Irish writer.
4
Mozley here quotes a long passage from Cobbett’s autobiography, in which he describes
finding and buying a copy of Swift’s Tale of a Tub (1704).
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 198
The child’s first visit to the theatre plays a telling part in the
memory of genius. Our readers will recall Charles Lamb’s vivid recol-
lections of his first play, Artaxerxes,
1
seen at six years old, when the
green curtain veiled heaven to his imagination—when, incapable of
the anticipation, he reposed his shut eyes in the maternal lap—when
at length all feeling was absorbed in vision. “I knew nothing, under-
stand [sic] nothing, discriminated nothing. I felt all, loved all,
wondered all, was nourished I could not tell how.” And Walter Scott,
at four, shouting his protest, “But ain’t they brothers?” as Orlando and
Oliver
2
fought upon the Bath stage. Goethe’s
3
childhood-recollec-
tions are all of the theatre and living actors and puppets, his earliest
and lasting inspiration. But the excitement of the scene commonly
makes a child too conscious of the present, and of his own part in it,
for the magic of new impressions to work undisturbed. A clever child
is stimulated to immediate imitation of what it sees. The sight of the
actors, the gaudy accessories, the artificial tones, lower the level. The
noblest language, the most impressive scenes, don’t work on the mind
as they do pictured by the busy absorbed fancy. No child reading
Macbeth or the Midsummer Night’s Dream could conceive the idea of
composing a play; but, taken to the theatre, play-writing proposes
itself as an obvious amusement. “It is the easiest thing in the world,”
said Southey,
4
at eight years old an habitué, “to write a play.” “Is it, my
dear?” said the lady he addressed. “Yes,” he answered; “for you know
you have only to think what you would say if you were in the place of
the characters, and to make them say it”: a notion very current with
children, who expect the words to come with the situation, but
unpromising for future success. We find always a period of gestation
between the first prompting and great achievement.
The most striking conjunction of favourable circumstances for intel-
lectual education is seen where severe study imparts the strength essential
on fiction as an educator
199
1
Charles Lamb (1775–1834), English essayist; Lamb probably remembers the operatic
version of Artaxerxes by Thomas Augustine Arne (1710–78).
2
Characters in Shakespeare’s As You Like It.
3
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), German Romantic poet.
4
Robert Southey (1774–1843), English Romantic poet; one of the group known as the
Lake Poets.
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to the forcible development of ideas, and gives vigour to the mind’s
conceptions, yet leaves leisure and opportunity in the season of “unper-
ilous choice” for the due working and entertainment of happy accidents;
infusing new images through the medium of pleasure, the more delight-
ful from an experience of task-work and labour imposed. The intellect
labours still, but it rejoices even in a strain to full tension, exacted neither
by duty nor teacher’s will, but by curiosity catching a glimpse of what life
may be, and what the world offers, to its choicer spirits. Where to these
is added the excitement of stirring times, and the clash and conflict of
great interests, we recognise the circumstances under which Milton’s
genius developed itself, and later on the school of our Lake poets.
Sometimes great political events are sufficient of themselves to give the
stimulus to childhood, providing they are viewed from a sufficient
distance, and are absolutely removed from personal participation. In
times of great wars, great tragedies, great discoveries, vast social changes,
indelible impressions are made on the minds of children, who hear of
them as they hear a fairy tale or the things that happened once upon a
time. We see such an influence telling on the little Brontë children, in
their remote seclusion, who lived in a permanent excitement about the
Duke of Wellington, and used to invent stories, of which the Marquess
of Douro
1
was the hero. But infancy rarely gets the proper ring of those
public stimulants. In wealthy well-regulated households the children are
in the nursery when telegrams bring their startling news, and the paper
at the breakfast-table tells of the hero falling in battle, of great cities
besieged, of new lands discovered, the earth’s treasures brought to light,
kings dethroned, emperors taken captive, and a nation’s joy suddenly
turned to mourning. Therefore, still to prefigure the terms and shocks
of fate—the deeper emotions of manhood—and to prepare heart and
soul for their keen reception and eloquent portrayal, must infancy be
fed on fictitious wonders, joys, and sorrows, and so learn the difference
between life as the mass use and treat it, and life in its nobleness, fasci-
nations, its capabilities; thus providing it with a pictured experience and
standard of comparison.
a serious occupation
200
1
Fictionalized versions of Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1769–1852), and of his
son, the Marquis of Douro, featured in Charlotte Brontë’s juvenilia. 
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As the world goes, however, it is not only that the child is out of sight
of excitements, but that the excitements of common life are small and
piecemeal; intolerable to eager expectation, if this be really all. Life is
rarely seen in picturesque circumstances; where it is, doubtless it makes
a deep impression. Any disinterested emotion from public events leaves
an indelible mark on the memory of childhood. T o find mamma crying
“because they have cut the Queen of France’s head off,” was an intel-
lectual stimulus of the noblest sort for little girls fourscore years ago, but
one which does not often come in the way of little girls. We old folks
cannot regret the humdrum exterior of our insular existence (if in the
painful—we trust it may also be passing—excitement of fierce war
between neighbour nations
1
we may use the expression), knowing that
emotion means discomfort and worse. We are content that the infant
should establish it as an axiom that grown-up people do not cry, nor
allow themselves in any turbid irregularities. It is well that joys and griefs
should hide their disorder from young eyes troublesomely inquisitive in
such matters, and treasuring up in memory every abnormal display of
passion as something rare and startling—if seen, that is, under dignified
or elevating circumstances, for the excesses of ill-temper are not what
we mean. Not the less is it part of a really liberal education to know of
such things with realising power; one, we assert, which fiction can alone
adequately perform. History tells of great sorrows and great successes,
but it is only poetry and fancy that can make them felt. It was the old
woman’s stories, listened to by Burns
2
—she who had the largest, wildest
collection in the whole country, of tales and songs about witches, appari-
tions, giants, enchanted towers, and dragons—that enlarged his imagi-
nation for the reception of heroic fact, and made reading the lives of
Hannibal and William Wallace
3
such an epoch. History of itself, eagerly
apprehended in childhood, ministers to personal ambition; and prema-
ture ambition does not, we think, lead to the fulfilment of its hopes. The
boy who devours Plutarch’s lives
4
of great men hopes to rival them.
on fiction as an educator
201
1
The Franco-Prussian War (1870–71).
2
Robert Burns (1759–96), Scottish poet.
3
Hannibal (247–183 BC), Carthaginian general; William Wallace (c. 1270–1305),
Scottish patriot.
4
Plutarch (c. 46–119), Greek historian, whose Parallel Lives paired stories of famous
Greeks and Romans.
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Fiction proper induces dreams, it may be, of personal aggrandisement,
but it more naturally sets the child upon weaving tales of his own, in
which self is forgotten.
But if works of fancy perform such wonders on the masculine
mind—if to it men of genius trace their first consciousness of thought,
the beginning of their present selves—much more is this the case with
women. If women, learning fact in a slipshod, inaccurate, unattrac-
tive way, are at the same time cut off from fiction, as by some strict,
scrupulous teachers they are, where is the wonder if their interests
and intellect alike stand at a low level? Miss Thackeray’s sleeping
beauty,
1
before the awakener comes, personates with little exaggera-
tion the mental famine in which some girls grow up to meagre
womanhood, learning dull lessons, practising stock-pieces, hearing
only drowsy family talk of “hurdles and pump-handles,” and adding
their quota to the barren discourse, like Cecilia in the story, with
“Mamma, we saw ever so many slugs in the laurel walk—didn’t we,
Maria? I think there are a great many slugs in our place.”
There are many women desultory, restless, incorrigible interrupters,
incapable of amusing themselves, or of being amused by the same
thing for five minutes together, who would have been pleasanter and
so far better members of society if once in their girlhood they had read
a good novel with rapt attention—one of Walter Scott’s or Miss
Austen’s, or, not invidiously to select among modern great names, if
the Fates had thrown it in their way, Sir Charles Grandison
2
—entering
into the characters, realising the descriptions, following the dialogue,
appreciating the humour, and enchained by the plot. If they had once
been interested in a book, their attention once concentrated out of
themselves, the relaxed unsteady faculties must have been nerved and
tightened by the tonic, not for the time only, but with lasting results.
Very few girls have the chance of thorough good training; nor do
we find that women of acknowledged genius have been exception-
ally fortunate in this respect. But we find more distinctly in them
a serious occupation
202
1
Anne Thackeray Ritchie (1837–1919), English novelist; her Five Old Friends and a Young
Prince (1868) retold a number of classic fairy tales in a contemporary manner.
2
Novel (1754) by Samuel Richardson (1689–1761), which features a model gentleman
as hero.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 202
even than in men the recognition of fiction as the awakening touch,
and this often allied with acting, and through the drama. Mrs. Thrale
was a pet of Quin’s, and taught by him to declaim. At six years old
she followed his acting of Cato with absorbed attention.
1
It was one
of Garrick’s offices to stimulate female genius. He helped to make
Hannah More.
2
It is curious in this relation to observe, towards the
end of the last century, the success, intellectually speaking, of a girls’
school at Reading, conducted by a French emigrant and his wife.
3
Dr. Valpy, indeed, was their friend, and his influence in direct teach-
ing might tell for much, but acting was part of its system. We are not
commending this excitement for girls, but merely noting for our
argument’s sake that three distinguished women, whose names are
still household words among us, were pupils at this school—Miss
Mitford, Mrs. Sherwood,
4
and Jane Austen. Any reader acquainted
with Miss Mitford’s works will recall a very bright account, in her
most glowing effusive vein, of a school-play, and of the girls who
acted it. On Mrs. Sherwood, her much-enjoyed residence at this
school, and share in its excitements, made as deep an impression;
though she dwells on her school-days avowedly to lament the want
of religious training—a deficiency, under the circumstances, not to
be wondered at. As for Jane Austen, she went to this same school at
Reading, when too young to profit much by the instruction imparted
there, because she would not be parted from her elder sister
Cassandra; but deep impressions may be given and thought awak-
ened before lessons of much consequence are learnt. Here the taste
for private theatricals was probably acquired which suggested such
admirable scenes in Mansfield Park.
on fiction as an educator
203
1
Hester Thrale Piozzi (1740–1821), friend and biographer of Samuel Johnson; James
Quin (1693–1766), leading actor; Joseph Addison’s (1672–1719) popular tragedy Cato.
2
David Garrick (1717–79), English actor, playwright, and impresario. Hannah More
(1745–1833) was a member of the Blue Stocking women’s group; best known for her
didactic tracts, one of her tragedies was produced by Garrick.
3
The Abbey School in Reading was run by a Mme. St. Quintin; Richard Valpy was head-
master of the Reading grammar school from 1781–1830, where he adapted plays for
the boys to perform.
4
Mary Russell Mitford (1787–1855), English essayist and dramatist; Mary Butt Sherwood
(1775–1851), English children’s author.
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But at this date, when education proper was not thought of for
girls, the drama had everywhere an education part to play. Madame
de Genlis,
1
as a child of five, enacted Love with such grace, and
looked so charming in fitting costume—pink silk, blue wings, quiver,
bow, and all—that her mother had several suits of it made for week-
day and Sunday, only taking off the wings when she went to mass. At
about the same age she read Clélie, Mlle. de Scudery’s wonderful
romance of ten volumes,
2
with its maps of the kingdom of tenderness;
caught the infection before she could write, and dictated novels in
her turn. These novels of Mlle. de Scudery, prolix to the utmost point
of unreadableness, were supreme influences in their own day. The
offspring of a genuine enthusiasm in their author, the fact that they
took time and protracted the dénouement beyond the capacity of
modern patience, did not prevent the youth of her day devouring
them with an enthusiasm as ardent, and they were fit instruments for
the purpose we indicate. Both for knowledge of character, in however
quaint disguise, and power of description, they bear favourable
comparison with many a popular novel of our day, while in elevation
of sentiment they stand on a higher level altogether than our own
sensational literature. We find the same combination of acting and
novel-reading in the childhood of Madame de Staël,
3
though she
came into the world when education had been started as the favourite
theme of the philosophers, and women took it up as the panacea with
more than manly faith. Fancy was then in disgrace. Madame Necker
objected to novels—her daughter must receive a severe classical train-
ing; and Madame de Genlis, who felt teaching her specialty, and in
her capacity of educationist would have quenched the Fairy Tale once
for all, longed to take the clever girl in hand “to make a really accom-
plished woman of her.” But the drama and the novel were not the less
a necessity and passion for the child of genius who cut out paper kings
and queens, and gave them each their heroic or passionate part, and
a serious occupation
204
1
Stéphanie Felicité, Madame de Genlis (1746–1830), French educational writer and
governess to one of the French princesses.
2
Madeleine de Scudéry (1607–1701), French novelist and literary hostess; Clélie
(1654–60) was one of her many long romans à clef.
3
Germaine Necker de Staël (1766–1817), French-Swiss essayist and novelist.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 204
undutifully smuggled Clarissa
1
under her lesson-books, declaring
years after that Clarissa’s elopement was one of the great events of her
youth. But novels read in childhood, whether by Scudery or
Richardson, imparted little of their own tone; this was all caught from
society and the family, from the living voice of the practical view of
things taken by the world around. Their influence might thus seem
to be rather intellectual than moral, though we would not presume
on this notion so far as to suffer a child knowingly to read what
offends propriety or right feeling.
The child, awaking to its powers, begins to be the same self it will
be to the end, occupied in the same speculations, open to the same
interests. With relation to society it knows itself a child; but in its
inmost consciousness, from early boyhood to old age, it knows no
change. To this innermost consciousness the class of children’s books
proper, with their juvenile feats and trials and lessons, ministers noth-
ing. They are too easy to understand—they keep the mind where it
is, instead of stretching it out of itself. They have indeed a most valu-
able purpose; where they are to be had they are practically essential
for the average run of children. Yet genius did, in fact, very well with-
out them. As Walter Scott says, in recalling his first acquaintance with
Hotspur, Falstaff, and others of Shakespeare’s characters,—“Children
derive impulses of a powerful and important kind from hearing
things which they cannot entirely comprehend. It is a mistake to write
down to children’s understanding. Set them on the scent, and let
them puzzle it out.”
It is a very natural prejudice, if only a prejudice, to assume that the
nature of the fiction that influenced the first thought of ourselves and
our ancestors is better suited to the work than what characterises our
own age; but we believe there is reason in the view. The more inven-
tion is pure and direct, the less it is mixed with analysis and elaborate
psychological speculation, the less it inquires into causes, or stops a
plain tale at every turn to tell the reason why, the more congenial it
is to a fresh and hungry curiosity. The structure of all the poetry and
fiction recorded to have wrought marvels upon infantile brains is
on fiction as an educator
205
1
Novel (1747–48) by Richardson.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 205
simple, and may be fully apprehended; while the high and deep
thought beneath bides its time, and grows with the growth. Spenser,
Shakespeare, Bunyan, Goldsmith,
1
Walter Scott, Coleridge, Southey,
and much of Wordsworth, are all adapted to every stage of thinking
humanity. The boast of our own age is the reverse of simplicity. Men
not only do things, but the reader has to get to the bottom of why they
do them. All the science of instinct is investigated to account for each
action. The reverencers of that “wonderful poem” and nine times told
tale, The Ring and the Book,
2
think it small reproach that no child could
read it—that he would probably feel repulsion towards it rather than
attraction; but the poetry that repels childhood wants one main stay
of fame and continuance. The sensational novel is as little adapted to
a child’s taste, with its stock corps of knaves, dupes, villains, and
favourites of fortune. He may run through it for the incident, but it
can make no footing in the memory. The superior claims on sympa-
thy of vice over virtue is an acquired idea. As an educator it is
nowhere, for it damages the intellect as much as the moral nature to
be early entangled in the quandaries of crime and a polluted
conscience; to view them with the feelings rather of a participator and
condoner than a judge. As for the drama, no plays now answer so well
as the detestable burlesque—a wallowing in the mire—which no child
could relish, after it understood the end and aim, without permanent
moral and intellectual degradation.
The motives now for exercising invention are of a more plodding
commonplace order than they were of old, when praise rather than
solid pudding was the inducement to the pains of composition. The
knack of writing novels with ease, and putting together creditably
imaginary talk, incident, and description, is an acquirement of our
time. It is astonishing how many people can do it well who would not
have dreamed of putting pen to paper a hundred years ago. Then it
was considered necessary to have a story to tell as a preliminary—the
novelist’s capital, so to say. It is clear that this is quite a secondary
a serious occupation
206
1
John Bunyan (1628–88), English author and preacher; Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74),
Irish author.
2
Epic verse-novel (1868–69) by Robert Browning (1812–89).
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 206
condition in much modern novel-writing. Start your characters, and
the story is expected to evolve itself. There must be plot and story, in
the true sense of the words, to engage and hold a child’s attention.
But Nature is not lavish of this crowning effort of invention, so that
the quantity of our so-called fiction tells nothing for the extent of its
influence; while the direction it takes, either as being didactic, and
obtruding a moral or philosophic purpose, or as ministering to a base
rather than an aspiring curiosity, or as surveying things with a nicety
and minuteness of investigation alien to the spirit of childhood, seems
still to throw us back upon the old models—the few typical achieve-
ments of genius—as the natural chosen nurses and cultivators of the
higher faculties,—models which probably owe their form and excel-
lence to some remote originator; for as there is nothing so rare as
invention in its strictest sense and highest walk, it follows that of inven-
tors proper, whether in verse or prose, there must be fewer than of
any other class the world owns.
SOURCE
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 108 (October 1870).
SELECTED SECONDARY READING
Jordan, Ellen. “Sister as Journalist: The Almost Anonymous Career of
Anne Mozley.” Paper presented at RSVP Conference, New York
City, September 2001.
Wingerd, Kathy L. New Voices in Victorian Criticism: Five Unrecognized
Contributors to Victorian Periodicals. Diss. Kent State University,
1987. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1988.
on fiction as an educator
207
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 207
Born in Cumbria near Penrith, elizabeth julia
hasell (1830–87) was the daughter of the lord and lady
of the manors of Dacre and Soulby. She was educated at
home and excelled at languages, teaching herself Latin,
Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese. According to “Pages from
the Story of My Childhood,” an autobiographical sketch
published in 1876 in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (Maga),
she began writing at an early age. Inspired by reading Walter
Scott’s Ivanhoe when she was nine, she wrote a three-act play
entitled “The Siege of D’Arcy Castle” (set at the nearby Dacre
Castle). According to her account, she first “rather shirked
any love-making,” only to find “the fighting more unman-
ageable than the love-making.” She continued to write
throughout her youth, penning a long narrative poem about
a knight buried in the nearby Dacre Church and, at age 13,
a “grand historical tragedy” on the battle of Hastings, which
was inspired by reading Racine on Aristotle’s dramatic unities.
While the adult Hasell laughed at her juvenilia, she also cred-
ited the effort of trying to write verses in her youth with
underpinning “the many hours of happiness” she had since
experienced when reading the classics.
Hasell began working as a literary critic in about 1858,
when she began contributing essays to Maga and to the
Quarterly Review, for whom she reviewed Lord Derby’s trans-
lation of the Iliad. She made her reputation as a critic of clas-
208
BROWNING’S POEMS
(DECEMBER 1870)
Elizabeth Julia Hasell
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 208
sical and southern European literature, and she was invited
to contribute the volumes on Calderon and Tasso (both
1877) to Blackwood’s Foreign Classics for English Readers series.
She also reviewed the major works of Tennyson for Maga and
of Robert Browning for St. Paul’s Magazine, and she published
essays on the elegy, the sonnet, and the ode. In addition to
her critical and translating work, she was evidently a tireless
educator in the Lake District, walking great distances to lead
classes and deliver lectures until her death in 1887.
The following essay is the first of a two-part series on
Browning’s major works, published in St. Paul’s Magazine in
1870 and 1871. It is among the first wave of critical reap-
praisals of Browning after the publication of his epic The Ring
and the Book (1868–69). While Hasell acknowledges the valid-
ity of some earlier criticisms of Browning’s poetry—notably
the awkwardness and ugliness of some of his imagery, his use
of colloquialisms, the morbidity of some of his characters, and
his occasional obscurity—she points to the genius underlying
his work. The difficulty, she claims, lies in Browning’s desire
to go beyond the traditional bounds of drama and poetry, “to
paint the light in its fountain instead of on land and sea ... the
life inside the brain and heart, instead of that same life
revealed in the human form divine.” When the experiment
succeeds, as it does in “Childe Roland,” the result is poetry
“as unsurpassed in [its] ever-gathering swell of rich, full
sound, as in the excitement of [its] visual imagery.”
browning has been partially known already to one
generation of the British public. A second has risen up since the
appearance of his first poem, before whom he modestly takes his stand
in his latest book, as still a candidate for the favour which their fathers
refused him. There is every sign that it will be accorded to him.
Everything seems to show that the many are at length about to concur
in the passionate admiration of the few, and to make up (as they are
browning’s poems
209
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 209
wont) for unreasonable neglect in the past by undiscriminating eulogy
in the present. This, though the better extreme of the two, is neither
satisfactory to the author so treated, when he is such a man as
Browning’s poems reveal himself to be, nor altogether good for those
who indulge in it; while its effect on the young, who have a taste to
form and a model to select for imitation, is sure to be bad, leading
them to mistake a master’s defects for merits, and to copy them, while
possibly overlooking his perfections altogether. The present seems,
therefore, a good time for an attempt to consider the most noticeable
matters in Browning’s works—the great qualities they reveal, the defi-
ciencies they betray; what things his varied powers have achieved
already, and what we may be justified in yet expecting from them.
Those powers are varied indeed, far beyond a poet’s ordinary
equipment; and at times, from their very number and size, an
encumbrance instead of a help to their possessor. His proficiency in
logic, his skill in metaphysics, his keen wit, and his delight in verbal
subtleties, are frequently too much for him, and impel him to display
them out of season. The bard wrestles in him with the philosopher,
and gets a fall; the humorist trips up the poet.
Much as Browning has written,—doubtless, for one reason, because
he has written so much,—he has not done full justice yet to some of his
poetical endowments; and it is now to be feared that they will never
receive it at his hands. Instead of cherishing and making them yield
their utmost for our benefit, he has often preferred to elaborate other
talents, great in their way, but not the poet’s peculiar heritage. Take,
for an instance, satire, which is the application to mean and base
objects of that genius which “detects identity in dissimilar” as well as
the “difference in similar things”; which thus uses a heaven-sent torch
to light up the recesses of a tavern; which is as useful a gift to an orator
as to a poet, to a Demosthenes as to a Juvenal, to Dryden the polished
and witty prose-writer as to Dryden the satirist in verse.
1
This power is
a favourite with Browning, who certainly possesses it abundant in meas-
ure and trenchant in quality. He has employed it with singular success;
a serious occupation
210
1
Demosthenes (384–322 BC), renowned Greek orator and stylist; Juvenal (c. AD 55–127),
Roman satirical poet; John Dryden (1631–1700), English poet, dramatist, and critic.
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but then to its employment he has not unfrequently sacrificed poetry.
We look all in vain for poetry in his clever pictures of the half-
conscious, refined, ecclesiastical, and the quite conscious, vulgar
cheat—“Bishop Blougram” and “Mr. Sludge.”
1
We read those two
monologues for the knowledge of human nature displayed in them,
for the portrait each man paints in them unintentionally of himself,
while he is using his skill against his neighbours or in his own defence;
but we only call them poems because they are written in a sort of blank
verse.
2
How if Browning had made less of this lower gift in order to
make the very most of its higher companion, his poetic genius, the
insight to which the ideal is revealed and the skill which exhibits it by
means of realities? How if there had been added to his vigorous imag-
ination, to his great dramatic faculty and to his fine ear for music, an
artistic conscience; and if he had firmly resolved to maintain it in its
rightful dominion over his other powers? Then we should have lost
some interesting metaphysical discussions which now overbalance and
spoil the harmonious proportions of his poems; some admirable traits
of character now revealed to us at the expense of dramatic propriety;
some racy expressions and exquisitely funny rhymes, which now
impart a flavour of grotesqueness to poems which should be purely
sublime or beautiful. In a word, we should have lost the Browning
whom we know; and we who know him can scarcely refrain from tears
at the thought. But what a poet we should have gained! A diver who,
having gone down deeper than his compeers, fetched us up nothing
but pearls of price; never disappointing us by bringing up vile things
instead—precious in his eyes because he had found them at a depth
of so many fathoms.
This last thought leads us to the greatest hindrance to Browning’s
attainment of universal popularity; that popularity which rewards the
poet whose genius has breadth as well as depth; the love of simple-
minded women and children as well as of men, of uneducated
persons as well as of the learned. The hindrance to winning such
browning’s poems
211
1
Poems from Men and Women (1855) and Dramatis Personae (1864).
2
Sometimes of this kind:—
The caddy gives way to the dram-bottle.
—“Mr. Sludge the Medium” [Author’s note.]
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acceptance as this lies in Browning’s deficient sense of beauty in his
choice of subjects. Doubtless as much skill may be shown in painting
an ugly as a beautiful face, a dirty farmyard as a glorious lake; but who,
even of observers with a special knowledge of painting, looks at the
two sorts of pictures with equal pleasure? While to the child, or to the
unlearned, the subject is almost everything, the execution nothing.
Even so Browning’s knowledge of human nature, his very skill in
tracking its devious windings and detecting its sins in their closest
lurking-places, have injured his power of exciting universal interest,
by tempting him to choose subjects which would best display this
knowledge, without regard to their intrinsic beauty. Some of his best-
known poems make the reader shudder, even while he most admires
their cleverness, by the physical or moral horrors which they set
before him. And when the child or intelligent rustic, who has laughed
loud over the delicious “Piper of Hamelin,” and cried for joy as the
good horse Roland’s hoofs smite the Aix pavement,
1
tries to read
more of the book which delighted him so much, he finds there little
that he can understand, except poisonings, stabbings, and stranglings,
varied by public executions of different degrees of cruelty, which
culminate in the burning alive of a man before a slow fire.
This want of feeling for the paramount claims of the beautiful may
be the reason why a writer, who knows every hole and corner of the clas-
sics, has only drawn one poem from (pre-Christian) Greek sources; why
the repose so familiar to him in the masterpieces of the ancients is the
quality in which his own works are most deficient; why, though delight-
ing in his adopted country’s art, though well knowing (as his poems
bear witness) how the sculptor feels as he watches some godlike form
grow beneath his hand, the painter as he looks up to his own Madonna
smiling down upon him from her golden light; the musician as the
wave of sound swells round him responding to his conception; yet when
he comes to deal with his own art, it is too often discords of music, the
snake-enfolded struggler of sculpture, the plague-stricken form of
painting that Browning has chosen for his own portion as a poet.
a serious occupation
212
1
References to “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” from Dramatic Lyrics (1842) and “How They
Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix” from Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845).
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His love of abnormal types of character, of morbid conditions of
mind, of exceptional crimes as subjects for his verse, will hinder
Browning’s popularity (in the widest sense of the term) even more
than that other barrier about which so much has been said—his pecu-
liarity of style.
Nevertheless this barrier exists also. Browning is the Carlyle of
verse; a lover, like that great writer, of odd nicknames,
1
and a coiner
of new and forcible expressions; like him, inclined rather to run risks
in the attempt to “snatch a grace beyond the reach of art”
2
than to
incur the reproach of tameness by following her beaten track; like
him, through native originality unconstrained where another man
would be odiously affected, applauded where that other would be
deservedly hissed; but also, like him, in the cloud which sometimes
obscures his meaning; and, therefore, even as he, neither to be
imitated with tolerable effect nor to be understood without prelimi-
nary initiation. It was chiefly from unwillingness to undergo the trou-
ble of that initiation in an unknown author’s favour that the last
generation received Browning’s first poems as they did. When the
new aspirant for poetic honours invited chance listeners to hear him
Talk as brothers talk
In half-words, call thing, by half-names,
and proposed confidentially to
Leave the mere rude
Explicit details: ’tis but brother’s speech
We need, speech where an accent’s change gives each
The other’s soul,
3
browning’s poems
213
1
Witness “Bluphocks” and “Gigadibs.” [Author’s note.] Characters from Pippa Passes
(1841) and “Bishop Blougram’s Apology.”
2
Line from Alexander Pope’s (1688–1744) poem An Essay on Criticism (1711).
3
Sordello. [Author’s note.] Play (1840) that tells the story of a troubadour caught up in
the conflicts of thirteenth-century Italy; Sordello also figures in Dante Alighieri’s
(1265–1321) Purgatory.
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can we wonder if men, whose typical poet was Byron, who complained
of Wordsworth’s difficulties, stood aghast at Paracelsus
1
and Sordello, and
turned from them exclaiming, “Non lectore tuis opus est, sed Apolline
libris?”
2
Is it marvellous if they thought the “Now die, dear Aureole” of
Festus, at the close of his friend’s long-winded death-bed harangue, the
most sensible thing in Paracelsus? or if they complained that while
Sordello’s first poet,
3
always profound, is only sometimes obscure, his
second, only sometimes profound, chose to be obscure always? Or can
we be surprised if even the wiser section, who had learned from
Coleridge that there is a kind of obscurity in an author which is a compli-
ment to the reader, felt the compliment here too much for their
modesty, and longed for less respect and more information?
But this sort of talk is now a thing of the past. Browning has modified
his style, though he still throws us a hard lyric nut, a “Respectability,” a
“Popularity,” to crack every now and then.
4
The British public grumbled for awhile, and then patiently learned
Browningesque as it before learned Carlylese. So that for the present
the advantages of a picturesque way of putting things remain for the
reader’s sensible enjoyment; its attendant disadvantages have retired
from his immediate observation. Nevertheless, they should not be left
out of sight in an attempt to estimate their employer’s genius; for they
must hinder his naturalisation among those men of other lands and
other ages whom every great poet addresses next to those of his own
day and country, and they mark that mind of which they are the natu-
ral outgrowth as (whatever its greatness) still below the measure of
the stature of those who sit serene on the Parnassian summit.
We do not, of course, mean that the unquestionable (though much
exaggerated) difficulty of Browning’s first poems is due to style alone.
It is caused fully as much by their subject. For in them a step is endeav-
oured to be taken beyond epos, beyond drama, for which no firm
a serious occupation
214
1
Poem (1835) based on the story of a sixteenth-century physician and alchemist; Festus
is one of Paracelsus’ companions.
2
Epigram from Martial: “Your books don’t need a reader, but an Apollo.” In other words,
“no one except the god of obscure oracles could understand your text.” 
3
Dante. [Author’s note.]
4
Two poems from Men and Women.
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footing can be secured. They are an attempt to paint the light in its
fountain instead of on land and sea, glittering in its beams; the life
inside the brain and heart, instead of that same life revealed in the
human form divine. They could not, therefore, but prove (artistically
speaking) failures, though failures worth more than some successes;
gallant, if unauthorised and unavailing, efforts to annex alien domin-
ions to the realms of poesy, and efforts from which many a victory
might be confidently predicted for the champion when marching
steadily beneath her banners.
T o resume, however, our considerations of Browning’s style, it is obvi-
ously a hindrance to dramatic success by being too marked and pecu-
liar for dialogue. The illusion, which it is the aim of the drama to
produce, is the result of a well-understood compromise between the
real and the ideal; and it is an infringement of the terms of this compro-
mise to require the spectator, who has already conceded that the
foreign personages before him may talk English verse, to grant further
that they may all use the same style of abrupt transition and startling
metaphor. Imagine a Platonic dialogue by Carlyle. Would the speaker,
now on this side, now on that, seem any other than the same man
addressing us from various positions? Even so it requires all Browning’s
great dramatic talent to neutralise the effect of his style upon his plays.
Those plays are eight in number, besides two short dramatic
sketches, each admirable in its way: A Soul’s Tragedy, for the sly fun of
the legate’s address; “In a Balcony,” for the tragic force compressed
into its brief space.
1
Of the longer dramas, Colombe’s Birthday
2
is a true
and graceful picture of a young heart passing in one short day from
girl to woman, from the vanities of the world’s outward show to the
knowledge and choice of deeper and better things. The speech of
Valence, the youthful Duchess’s humble but heroic defender, glory-
ing in his apparently unrequited love for her, is a very noble one.
Pippa Passes, the most unique, is deservedly the best known and best
loved of Browning’s plays. What fancy could be more charming than
this of the sweet child who spends her holiday in playfully imagining
browning’s poems
215
1
A Soul’s Tragedy was published in 1846; In a Balcony appeared in Men and Women.
2
Published in 1844.
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herself by turns the four people she supposes the happiest in her town
while she sings those pretty songs which now enhance, now alleviate,
their real misery; who lies down at night, unconscious alike of the good
she has effected and the evil she has escaped, commending herself to
Him who, while she knew it not, had perfected His praise out of her
mouth? Here, too, both the author’s lyric and dramatic talent find
expression, and mutually support one another. The scene between
Ottima and Sebald is powerfully tragic; and the contrast between the
hoarse accents of their guilt and the fresh pure voice outside is as over-
powering to the spectator as to themselves. Still, are not the dark
shades, both here and in a subsequent scene, laid on with a somewhat
coarse hand? Are not painful features obtruded on us in this play more
than was absolutely needful?
Of the plays which are regular tragedies, A Blot in the Scutcheon is
incomparably the best. King Victor and King Charles follows it after a
certain interval.
1
The four personages of this last play are well drawn
and well contrasted; the wily father with the open-hearted son, the
artful minister with the noble-minded wife. We have always admired
the catastrophe; when the hoary schemer, baffled by his son’s plain
honesty, has recourse to truth at last, and, by its aid, attains the privi-
lege of dying with the crown, the object of his life’s desires, on his
head. But the Blot is at once more thoroughly tragic in subject, and
worked out with more completeness. It is a play in which not a stroke
is wasted, in which every speech and every circumstance contributes
to the final result. Though English in its colouring, though it depends
for its catastrophe on the modern code of honour, yet this tragedy is
Greek in the unexpectedness of the discovery on which it turns, and
in the sense of an inevitable impending woe which pervades it. The
contrast between the prosperous splendour of the doomed house and
its hidden disgrace, between Mildred’s seemingly innocent beauty
and her real guilt, is most impressive. Nor can any two characters be
more touching in their sadness than those of Mildred and her lover;
the girl looking up, loving but hopeless, to the hand which she feels
must strive in vain to lift her from the abyss into which it plunged her
a serious occupation
216
1
Published in 1843 and 1842, respectively.
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first; the youth’s frank nature subdued to unaccustomed deceit, and
his brave arm unnerved by his consciousness of guilt. In all the
domain of tragedy there are few more pathetic speeches than Lord
Mertoun’s, as he lies mortally wounded, to the man whom hoped to
call his brother.
1
•••
The dramatic power exhibited in this tragedy and in Pippa is of a
very high order. And in all Browning’s plays we feel that we are watch-
ing real men and women, not mere impersonated virtues and vices;
while his best characters are strong and individual conceptions,
unfolded to us naturally by their own words and deeds. Where there
is a failure, it is caused by the dramatist placing too many of his
personages on his own level in point of intellect, so that their reason-
ings display a suspiciously uniform correctness, their wit a too equal
brilliancy. For it cannot be denied that Browning sometimes pushes
his speakers unceremoniously aside to take their place himself. King
Victor’s reflection on the loathsomeness of a crafty old age should
have been made by some bystander. Colombe’s courtiers reveal their
selfishness with uncourtly frankness. Poor Young Mertoun speaks of
his own youth more like an older man talking of a boy than a boy talk-
ing about himself. Ignorant Phene
2
turns a critic’s eye on the
students’ self-conceit. And even dear little Pippa herself is rather high-
flown and strained in her first salutation to the daylight, and her “Best
people are not angels quite” is over-mature and unchildlike.
This disposition to lend the author’s brain as well as his tongue to
his characters appears oftener still in Browning’s monologues; and
oftenest of all in that series which form his latest work. In the
“Experiences of Karshish,”
3
this fine description of the risen Lazarus’s
state—
browning’s poems
217
1
Hasell here quotes Mertoun’s speech from act 3, scene 1 of The Blot in the Scutcheon.
2
Character in Pippa Passes.
3
“An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician”
from Men and Women.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 217
The spiritual life around the earthly life,
The law of that is known to him as this—
His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here,
is not within the competence of the supposed writer. The young David
reasoning out the hope of the future in “Saul,” the aged St. John argu-
ing against the unbelief of later times (and this, too, in a style so
remote from that of his published sayings as to give full proof of their
verbal inspiration), are anachronisms of thought which at once direct
our gaze from the supposed to the real speaker.
1
The three monologues most entirely free from such faults are two
which belong to the Italy of the renaissance, and one which depicts
the darker side of monastic life. Each of these portrays a different
kind of wickedness at its height. Each is a legitimate, because a poetic,
exercise of the tremendous power of satire possessed by its writer. And
each gives proof of how disinterested he is in its employment; since
he forbears all appeal to the ill-nature of his readers by directing its
lightnings against evil-doers remote from them, instead (like the
older satirists) of aiming them at the sinners at their doors. The
“Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”
2
is alike too well known and too
horrible for quotation. It is a picture (ghastly in its evident truth) of
superstition which has survived religion; of a heart which has aban-
doned the love of kindred and friends, only to lose itself in a wilder-
ness of petty spite, terminating in an abyss of diabolical hatred. The
ordinary providential helps to goodness have been rejected; the ill-
provided adventurer has sought to scale the high snow-peaks of saint-
liness,—he has missed his footing,—and the black chasm which yawns
beneath has engulfed him.
Yet more terrible than the outspoken Spaniard is the smooth
Italian prince in “My Last Duchess,” with his polished reserve, his
agreeable dilettanteism and his cold-blooded cruelty. The way in
which that accomplished art-patron (while displaying her portrait to
a serious occupation
218
1
“Saul” is from Men and Women; St. John is the speaker in “A Death in the Desert” from
Dramatis Personae.
2
This poem and “My Last Duchess” are from Dramatic Lyrics.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 218
his intended new father-in-law’s envoys) calmly divulges the fact that
he could criticise his first wife’s deportment. as well as her picture,
and that, liking the former worse than the latter, he gave commands
for her death, chills the blood with horror.
Worse still, in one respect, than this model husband, is the model
bishop whom we overhear ordering “his tomb in St. Praxed’s
Church.”
1
We shudder as we listen to that mitred worldling invoking
the saints, yet dying, as he lived, without God; viewing his disgraceful
past without remorse, his terrific future without concern; nay, unable
to discern that future at all, blocked out, as it is, to his contracted
vision by the rose marble and lapis lazuli, the sculptured frieze and
choice Latin inscription for which he wrestles with his sons’ avarice,
the ornaments of that magnificent tomb which is to enable him to
triumph even in death over a hated rival. It has been remarked that
we must go to Juvenal alike for an adequate parallel to this poem, or
to the withering sarcasm of the first part of “Holy-Cross Day,”
2
in
which a Jew (forced to listen to a sermon from even such a bishop)
pours forth the indignation which, as he says
Overflows, when to even the odd,
Men I helped to their sins, help me to their God.
And if the great Roman’s severity of satire is here equalled or outdone,
who, after all, need feel surprised? For what heathen satirist had ever
folly like this to scourge? The old world’s decayed civilisation showed
him man faithless only to his own moral sense and to the ideal that
philosophy had set before him. A Christian’s lapse into paganism
involves the disregard of a greater Guide, and the rejection of a diviner
prize. In the awful procession formed by all who have heard the
gospel, if “those who are being saved” have joys unknown to the best
heathen, in like manner must those who are perishing far surpass the
worst of the elder day in their folly, their guilt, and their misery.
browning’s poems
219
1
“The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church” from Dramatic Romances and
Lyrics.
2
From Men and Women.
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No wonder, then, that these monologues (masterpieces of their
kind) appal us while we admire. Gentle readers (if sensation novels
have left any) will wonder how their author bore the preliminary study:
just as the beholder of certain pictured horrors marvels how the artist
could ever endure to paint them. We have asked ourselves the same
question before now, especially when reading (in the Dramatis Personae)
the ghastly tale of the dying girl and her hoard of gold.
1
And we came
to the conclusion that, just as critics mark with surprise in lofty and
pure-minded Dante a strange attraction to the physically nauseous and
repulsive, like that which dragged the old Greek (protesting the while
aloud) to satiate his eyes on the loathsome corpse by the wayside; even
such a power do similar spectacles in the moral world exercise over
Browning. But we must not lead any one to suppose that his satire
gleams phosphorescent over such dark spots alone. Let us thankfully
remember how it plays over the Italian nobleman’s love for his town
with its drum and fife, and all its little stirs; how it casts a new though
not a favourable light on the hero of Schiller’s “Glove”; how it illumi-
nates the silliness of the mediaevalist in “The Flight of the Duchess”;
2
and how it once condescends to enact the part of the good-natured
lightning of the electric machine, and sport, all fun and no danger, for
the children’s amusement in “The Piper of Hamelin.”
Nor should we omit to notice the deep-rooted convictions, alike
moral and religious, from which Browning’s severer satire springs; or
fail to acknowledge that if he sometimes disallows the claims of the
beautiful, he is never unmindful of those of the truth. He approaches
the subject of religion oftener than is the wont of modern poets, and
he handles it more satisfactorily. Shakspeare, Spenser,
3
and Milton
knew in Whom they believed, defective as is the last-named’s creed.
But Pope only proclaims the worship of an unknown God. And the
a serious occupation
220
1
Reference to “Gold Hair: A Legend of Pornic.”
2
Reference to “Up at a Villa—Down in the City” from Men and Women. Both Browning’s
and German Romantic poet Friedrich Schiller’s (1759–1805) poems “The Glove” are
based on an old French tale in which a lady tests her suitor by dropping a glove into a lion
pit; “The Glove” and “The Flight of the Duchess” are from Dramatic Romances and Lyrics.
3
Edmund Spenser (1552–99), English poet whose best-known work is The Faerie Queene
(1590–96).
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 220
bulk of modern poetry gives the reader too much this sort of impres-
sion of its writer’s mind: “We are not sure that the Christian faith is
true, nay, we shrewdly suspect it to be false; but those who held it in
the olden time, and the unlettered who believe it now, form charm-
ing themes for verse. See that knight taking his sword from the altar,
that pale votaress kneeling before the shrine; listen to those peasants’
evening hymn, or to the preacher before whose accents the listening
crowd sways like corn before the wind; we need not inquire whether
their faith be true or false, but let us diligently improve, for artistic
purposes, the beauty of its manifestations.”
Not so, says the poet before us. This faith is true, and in its truth
lies its beauty. Strong in this conviction, he does not fear to contem-
plate those who hold it in weakness, in ugliness, even in vulgarity;
because to his eye there gleams through the earthen pitcher the Fire
from heaven, behind the rough shell the Pearl of Price, beneath the
field’s thistles and nettles the hidden Treasure.
To him the most interesting of all historic periods is that when on
wrecked humanity, after the long and stormy night, the Sun of
Righteousness first arose. By force of contrast, the other epoch which
seems most to have engaged his attention is that of the revival of
Greek learning and art in Europe, with all the loss and gain which
have resulted from it to the Christian Church. Most graphic is his
picture of the faith and love of primitive times in the unargumenta-
tive portion of “A Death in the Desert.” Yet more remarkable is the
“Epistle of Karshish,” the most fascinating to thoughtful minds of all
Browning’s poems. An Arab physician of the first century describes,
in a letter to a learned friend, his interview with the risen Lazarus. He
is inclined to consider the man’s story a case of mistaken trance; he
is anxious to display no other than a medical interest in the matter,
and for that purpose intersperses his account with descriptions of
natural curiosities. But when he comes to mention the patient’s
perfect health and unearthly peace, he betrays a stronger disposition
to believe his tale than he likes to acknowledge to himself. He fights
against the conviction; after saying that this Lazarus believes his awak-
ener to be God and yet Man, he apologises for the very mention of so
monstrous an assertion. Yet the affected indifference with which he
browning’s poems
221
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turns aside to describe a curious plant which he has seen, cannot hide
his emotion at the bare possibility of that assertion’s truth. This tone
of forced calmness is maintained to the very close of the letter, and
then the writer, ceasing to struggle against the truth which is shaking
his spirit to its centre, exclaims:
The very God! think, Abib, dost thou think?
So the All-Great were the All-Loving too—
So through the thunder comes a human voice
Saying, “O heart I made, a heart beats here!
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in Myself,
Thou hast no power, nor may’st conceive of Mine,
But love I gave thee with Myself to love,
And thou must love Me who have died for thee!”
The madman saith He said so: it is strange.
This is a very fine poem. It is not merely that it gives us a sense of
pleasurable surprise, by presenting to us from so strange and unex-
pected point of view the great, well-known history; nor only that it is
true to human nature in its picture of man’s ignorance taking great
for small and small for great things: it derives its especial excellence
as a work of art from the way in which it shows us the awful truth
which it enshrines, first glimmering from afar, next lighting up one
face fully amid the darkness, and then at last flooding the beholder
with a sudden blaze of glory.
Two of Browning’s noblest lyrics also are on religious subjects. His
“Saul,” though, as we have mentioned, an anachronism, is still a grand
expression of faith in God; and the uprising of all nature at the close
of the poem, to sympathise with the truth new-born in David’s soul,
is a beautiful conception. The latter part of “Holy-Cross Day “ (strange
end to its sarcastic beginning) is the appeal of men faithful to their
portion of revealed truth, the persecuted Jews, against their Christian
oppressors, who hold their larger heritage in unrighteousness. It is
expressed with a force of pathetic indignation which is wonderfully
striking. At the opposite pole to these poems we have that profoundly
instructive caricature of the exalters of sovereignty at the expense of
a serious occupation
222
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love among the divine attributes—Caliban gazing with mingled fear
and hatred on his own image, magnified in his Setebos and projected
into the clouds for him to worship.
1
These five poems are among the best known, as they are among
the finest of their author. On the other hand, his “Christmas Eve” and
“Easter Day” have hardly yet received the attention they deserve.
2
The
first-named is a strange mixture of the lightest sport with the gravest
earnest. Its humour, now broad as in the account of the congregation
of Zion Chapel, now subtle as in the German professor’s lecture, is
enhanced by the same far-fetched trisyllabic rhymes as those which,
in the “Hamelin Piper” and “Flight of the Duchess,” compete with the
fun of Ingoldsby Legends.
3
But this humour, perilous from its close
juxtaposition with sacred things, is still far from being irreverence; for
there stands behind it so strong a conviction of the importance of reli-
gious truth, that the possessor of that conviction can affect to jest with
the absurdities of that truth’s adherents. From a beginning quaint
and laughable to excess, the poem rises to a vast height of moral as
well as poetic sublimity. It was written at Florence, and by the strong
grasp it takes with one hand of the homeliest and commonest earthly
matters, with the other of high and heavenly things, might please the
great spirit who hovers over Arno, and who did the self-same thing
(but on a vaster scale and with unapproachable dignity) in his own
mighty poem.
The main idea of “Christmas Eve” is that a Christian cannot despise
his meanest or most erring brethren; if he allows himself so to do, he
ceases to be a Christian any longer. A subsidiary thought is that it is
one thing, and that most dangerous, to
Sit apart, holding no forms of creeds,
But contemplating all,
browning’s poems
223
1
“Caliban upon Setebos” from Dramatis Personae; based on the character from
Shakespeare’s Tempest.
2
Published together in 1850.
3
The Ingoldsby Legends were a collection of poems and narratives published in 1840,
supposedly by “Thomas Ingoldsby” but actually by clergyman R.H. Barham (1788–1845).
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 223
and quite another (being indeed our bounden duty) to prove all
things, and hold fast that which is good. Its supposed speaker seeks
shelter one Christmas Eve from a storm among the congregation of
an ugly meeting-house in the squalid outskirts of a town. There, after
hearing the preacher deduce the doctrine of the most holy Trinity
from the dream of Pharaoh’s baker, he (to the pious horror of his
neighbours) falls asleep, and dreams. In that vivid dream he believes
himself to have rushed out, disgusted by the preacher’s perversion of
Scripture and by his hearers’ spiritual pride, and to be walking alone
on the hillside. There, reflecting on the scene which he has left, he
considers how he first attained the knowledge of God in lonely medi-
tation, and thinks he may leave others to seek Him in their narrow
shrines, standing aloof from them himself to commune with Him in
the great temple of His works. He is reproved by a vision. The storm
has ceased: the moon breaks through the cloud-masses which walled
her in, and a resplendent lunar rainbow spans the vault of heaven, the
fit herald of the greater glory which approaches—the presence of Him
who at this season first came down to visit His Church, revealed on the
same errand to the astonished gazer. Then he remembers that prom-
ise to the assembled two or three which he had been disregarding,
1
and fears to have forfeited his own share in it by his contempt for his
lowly brethren. He confesses his fault, and grasps the healing hem of
the glorious vesture. Wrapped in its folds, he is borne over land and
sea to Rome. Standing there at the door of St. Peter’s, he thinks why
it is that he is left outside while the Divine Presence goes within among
the assembled worshippers. He sees how Infinite Mercy can bless the
erring by means of the truth they still hold, without bidding its more
enlightened children to receive the error because they love the truth.
Just as his heart is rising to embrace these brethren whom his intellect
cannot but disapprove, he is borne away once more. He now finds
himself at a lecture-hall in Göttingen,
2
which he enters unbidden,
hoping to gain for his mental powers what Rome denied them. The
lecturer gravely propounds,
a serious occupation
224
1
See Matthew 18:20.
2
Home of famous university; center of secular thought, as Rome is a center of religious
thought.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 224
Whether ’twere best opine Christ was,
Or never was at all, or whether
He was, and was not, both together,
and the believer cannot listen to him long. Yet is he struck by the
homage rendered to that Name even by those who have lost their hold
of all that can explain and justify it. He tries to hope that these men’s
lips deny a truth that their hearts receive unknowingly, and is tempted,
amid these charitable thoughts, to grow careless of creeds, to
a mild indifferentism,
Teaching that all our faiths (though duller
His shine through a dull spirit’s prism)
Originally had one colour.
But as he so muses he finds to his terror that he has lost hold of the
saving garment altogether. Nor does he recover it till he has acknowl-
edged, repentant,
Needs must there be one way, one chief,
Best way of worship: let me strive
To find it, and when found, contrive
My fellows also take their share.
He feels that man, the conscript in life’s battle, must “buy the truth
and sell it not,” alike for the sake of the dying around him and for his
own. Thereupon he grasps the vesture once more—and awakes, on
the seat as before beneath the preacher, who is just conducting his
discourse; whence, consenting on reflection to drink even from the
poorest chalice the water of life which refreshes the sick and around
him, he (with a prayer for the like blessing on both Pope and profes-
sor) rises to join in the humble congregation’s evening hymn.
So ends one of the boldest combinations of incongruous materials
ever successfully essayed—a poem which makes the reader smile at
first, and then thrills him with awe—the awe not taking away his power
to smile, the surface absurdities not diminishing the awe. The two
browning’s poems
225
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descriptions, of the rainbow at night and of St. Peter’s with its myriads
of breathless worshippers, would be pointed out as beauties in any
poem; while there is a power in the divine apparition (suggested, not
described) which unspeakably comforts and elevates the soul.
In the companion of “Christmas Eve,” “Easter Day,” a man tells of
an awful vision which he saw on that blessed morning—the product,
as he tries to think, of his disordered fancy stimulated by an aurora
of intense brightness, but which he sometimes inclines to believe a
dread reality; so that, while seeming a living man among the living,
he may be, in truth, one already tried, sentenced, and undergoing his
doom. He had been examining his own heart, he says, when he
looked up, and, lo! the heavens were on fire, the great day had come,
and he must stand before his Judge—his own conscience pronounc-
ing his condemnation, because he had chosen the world for his
portion instead of Him who made it. The light dies away; all is over,
and he hears his sentence proclaimed. Different crimes find differ-
ent penalties. His sin has been the preference of earthly to heavenly
joys. His punishment is to live for ever among the seeming-real shows
of the now vanished world, an exile from heaven and from God. At
first he thinks this doom a light one; for is there not enough beauty
on the earth to give the mind endless satisfaction? “Nay,” replies the
Judge, “not a mind that knows this fairness in its imperfection, for the
guarantee of that perfect-beauty which it must now never hope to
see.” If nature thus fails the soul, can it then find no delight in art?
“No, for earthly art only charmed as a prophecy of that ideal which
shall never now be realised.” Can the spirit find no satisfaction then
in knowledge? “The goal of knowledge has been reached.” Ah, then!
cries the disappointed man, let me at least love. Love gave my soul its
purest joys in the life that has now vanished. Let it cheat itself into still
loving its shadowy companions, and believing they can love again.
“Try it, if thou wilt,” is the final answer; “but must it not remind thee
of that Love which might have been thine own?—the love which
created, redeemed, and would have filled thy soul for ever, but which
thou couldst not credit (so great was it), and didst cast away?” Then
the soul discerns its hopeless misery, and prays, in its despair, at least
for power to forget its state:—
a serious occupation
226
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Let that old life seem mine—no more—
With limitation as before,
With darkness, hunger, toil, distress:
Be all the earth a wilderness!
Only let me go on, go on,
Still hoping ever and anon
To reach one eve the better land.
XXXII.
Then did the Form expand, expand—
I knew Him through the dread disguise,
As the whole God within his eyes
Embraced me.
XXXIII.
When I lived again,
The day was breaking,—the grey plain
I rose from, silvered thick with dew.
Was this a vision? False or true?
The speaker knows not which; his fears tell him it was true, and
that his own is now a hopeless case; his hopes oftener persuade him
that all was but a warning, and that to him too the promise of Easter
morn may yet find fulfilment.
The leading thought of “Easter Day” is, therefore, that so familiar
to an Augustine, to a Herbert,
1
that there is no object adequate to fill
the boundless capacity of a human soul, save He who made it for
Himself. And this thought is enforced with an argumentative skill,
and adorned by a poetic beauty, which will repay close examination;
while the great theme is here treated with more uniform seriousness
than in “Christmas Eve.”
Both poems claim the Christian’s gratitude by their unwavering and
fearless faith; both command the critic’s admiration by the mastery they
browning’s poems
227
1
St. Augustine (354–430), early Christian theologian; George Herbert (1593–1633),
English metaphysical poet.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 227
exhibit over the most unyielding materials, by their wonderful flights
of fancy, and by the lofty beauty which they attain in their best passages.
The versification of “Christmas Eve” and “Easter Day” exhibits on a
larger scale the qualities of strength and ease, conspicuous in their
writer’s lyrics, both in those which present us with familiar measures,
and in those where (the musician of the prophecy in Pippa turning poet
instead of painter) new combinations of sound are essayed and startling
variations effected. Here, as we have said already, the peculiarities of the
author’s genius sometimes interfere with the reader’s pleasure; for some
of his short poems are effectually precluded by their subject from pleas-
ing, in whatsoever else they may succeed. Others, not professedly comic,
burlesque their theme by out-of-the-way rhymes and odd expressions,
instead of setting it off for our admiration. Others, again, though fine
in conception, exhibit failures in execution—such as the offence against
good taste of the disagreeable similes, the grass which grows “scant as
hair in leprosy,” and the earth which breaks into “boils” and “blotches”
in “Childe Roland.”
1
With such faults must be classed quite needless
descents from a high poetic eminence to a level of plain, perhaps ludi-
crous, prose—descents proper and natural in drama, which is a minia-
ture representation of human life as a whole, but improper and very
disturbing in lyric poetry, which aims at depicting single exalted
moments of life taken by themselves. An instance of our meaning, and
at the same time an exemplification of the saying that in some cases “the
half is more than the whole,” is afforded by “The Grammarian’s
Funeral,” a poem which we may assume to be well known to those for
whom we write. In it low words like “dab” and “queasy,” and the prosaic
and minute catalogue of the various complaints, and somewhat trivial
studies, of the deceased mar the grave solemnity of the burial chant.
They ill accord with the peculiar and very fine musical effect of the
bearers’ song, as they carry their beloved teacher’s corpse to his lofty
burying-place, their measured tread keeping time to the accents of their
manly grief, swelling upwards in the long iambic line, to fall back
regularly in the short succeeding adonic.
2
But after allowing for all
a serious occupation
228
1
From Men and Women; “The Grammarian’s Funeral” is also from this volume.
2
Metrical combination of a dactyl followed by a spondee.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 228
drawbacks, we still find much delightful both to mind and ear in
Browning’s lyrics, and see in them one of his surest passports to immor-
tality. Already his Paracelsus is opened oftener for the sake of those it
contains than for any other reason. Some of them give fuller expression
to their writer’s love of nature, and close observation of her various
aspects, than the longer poems, where such gifts are of necessity subor-
dinated to “the proper study of mankind.” Two of the lyrics
1
give a live-
lier idea of the scenery of north and south Italy than many volumes of
travels. Others set before us the Venice of the past with graphic power.
Of these, “In a Gondola”
2
is one of the smoothest and sweetest of its
author’s compositions—the ever-varying music of the poem conveying
to the mind an ineffaceable impression of that passionate love of Italian
hearts which laughs at death and fate, as the verse flows on, now
languishing like the floating barque, now steady as the rhythmic beat of
the oars, which bear the doomed pair onward; now broken by the bursts
of song which rise from them ever and anon in fitful snatches as they
sweep to their destruction. The same sense of how love is able to
compress an eternity into an hour is the inspiring thought of “The Last
Ride Together,”
3
where the full strong tide of feeling rolls, in wave after
wave alike, each curling over and breaking in anapaestic form. But to
English hearts the short poem entitled “The Lost Mistress” will be always
dearer than these, alike for its simplicity and its self-restraint.
4
•••
There are three very noble lyrics in the later volume entitled
Dramatis Personae, though in two of them—“Rabbi Ben Ezra” and “Abt
Vogler”—the loftiness of the thoughts sometimes outsoars adequate
clearness of expression. The first-named is a fine hymn of the aged,
with its solemn expansion of the metaphor of man the clay, and time
the wheel on which the great Potter shapes him. The swift movement
browning’s poems
229
1
“By the Fireside” and “The Englishman in Italy.” [Author’s note.] From Men and Women
and Dramatic Romances, respectively.
2
From Dramatic Lyrics.
3
From Men and Women.
4
Hasell here quotes the poem, from Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, in full.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 229
of “Abt Vogler” echoes well (until its prosaic termination) the extem-
poriser’s thoughts, who surveys with pride “the palace of music” he
rears, and, mourning its disappearance, turns for relief to the Sole-
Changeless, in Whom all fair things for ever abide. This is the last
stanza but two:—
All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
When eternity confirms the conception of an hour.
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that He heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by.
“Prospice,” the best known of the three, is a stirring and soul-uplift-
ing strain, neither hard to understand, nor anywhere deviating into
prose. Its peculiar staccato effect is similar to that of “Saul,” though
not produced in the same manner. For readers (if any there be) to
whom Browning’s remarkable and successful use of such metres is not
known, we extract a briefer specimen, one of the most striking of his
minor poems; in which the short line composed of two anapests
(following and rhyming to the three of the longer line) represents by
its abruptness the misery of the successful duellist, which, becoming
too great for words, breaks off shorter yet in the last line of all.
1
•••
The music of this poem is not of the old familiar sort, like that of
“The Lost Leader” or “The Cavalier Tunes” on the one hand, or that
of “Johannes Agricola,” or “Any Wife to Any Husband” on the other;
2
but it suits the subject well, and, when once learned, clings closely to
a serious occupation
230
1
Hasell here quotes the second half of “Before and After” from Men and Women.
2
The first two poems are from Dramatic Romances and Lyrics; the latter two are from
Dramatic Lyrics and Men and Women.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 230
the memory. There is another peculiar metre which is a favourite with
Browning; it is that of this commentary on the saying, “Heaven is for
those who have failed on earth,” which we here present to our read-
ers; premising that, beautiful as it is, they will see in it three instances
(though very mild ones) of the faults we have already mentioned. The
slightly-confused metaphor of the second stanza’s first line, the imper-
fect rhyme of the same stanza’s last word, and the very unpoetical
expression at the end of the first stanza’s second line, are unsought
examples, on a small scale, of their author’s occasional defects of
taste. But they are here eclipsed by the splendour of one of the most
effective contrasts ever drawn, the same figure noble in the sunshine,
but standing out far nobler in the storm; and they are overpowered
by the grandeur of the sufferer’s final appeal from man to God.
1
•••
The last of Browning’s short poems about which we can say a word
at present is the romance which derives its name from Edgar’s song in
King Lear: a weird story invented to match a Shakspearean title, rather
than, like Tennyson’s beautiful Marianas,
2
an expansion of a
Shakspearean idea. We would not fear to take any one who had read
“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” through carefully, for judge
of many of our preceding observations. For the less favourable would
be justified on a cursory inspection of its thirty-four stanzas, by a suffi-
ciency of prosaic and careless expressions, and by more than a suffi-
ciency of grotesque and painful metaphors; while the very real poetry,
which these blemish without destroying, would prove of itself justice
of our praise. The poem at first sight appears the recollection of a
nightmare: the river, “so petty, yet so spiteful,” its suicidal willows and
its hidden horrors, the traces of deadly combat on its bank and the
grim wheel of torture on the road, furnishing all the scenery of a
fevered dream. But from amidst these wild forms there emerges a strik-
ing image of life, of its many disappointments, its strange successes;
browning’s poems
231
1
Hasell here quotes the full text of “The Patriot” from Men and Women.
2
Reference to Tennyson’s poems “Mariana” and “Mariana in the South.”
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 231
and the mysterious story becomes a parable, sad yet inspiriting, of
youth’s desire attained when youth’s illusions are no more, too late for
joy, but not too late for duty; of the highest of all the kinds of courage,
that of the man who, bereft of his early comrades, finds the stroke
which he was to have struck with them brought unexpectedly within
the reach of his single arm; who knows that whether he conquers or
falls it must now be alone, yet nerves himself to do a man’s part and
to strike the blow, alike without sympathy and without applause. The
teller of the tale has vainly sought the Dark Tower for years; there to
perform some great, but unexplained adventure. After all his hopes
have died away, left last of the goodly band who first vowed the enter-
prise along with him, he learns amazed and half incredulous, from a
“hoary cripple with malicious eye,” the right track to the Tower. He
follows it in the evening light, over a long and dreary plain, amid the
discouragement of fearful or loathsome sights, and yet sadder and
bitterer memories. As he pursues his way, his object seems to draw no
nearer; nor can he recognise the goal of his life-long wandering at first,
as it rises up before him in the failing daylight. Then follow the last
four stanzas of the poem, as unsurpassed in their ever-gathering swell
of rich, full sound, as in the excitement of their vivid imagery:—
XXXI.
What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
In the whole world. The tempest’s mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf 
He strikes on, only when the timbers start.
XXXII.
Not see? because of night perhaps? Why, day
Came back again for that! before it left 
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,—
“Now stab and end the creature—to the heft!”
a serious occupation
232
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XXXIII.
Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears,
Of all the lost adventurers my peers,—
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet each of old
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.
XXXIV.
There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”
1
SOURCE
St. Paul’s Magazine 7 (December 1870).
SELECTED SECONDARY READING
Wingerd, Kathy L. New Voices in Victorian Criticism: Five Unrecognized
Contributors to Victorian Periodicals. Diss. Kent State University,
1987. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1988.
browning’s poems
233
1
Hasell concludes with a promise to discuss Browning’s epic The Ring and the Book
(1868–69) in a subsequent article.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 233
The eldest daughter of novelist William Makepeace Thackeray,
anne thackeray (1837–1919) was born in London.
When she was about three, her mother had to be institution-
alized for mental illness, and Anne and her sister lived for a
number of years with their paternal grandmother in Paris.
Educated at home in a lively literary milieu, Anne began to
write early under her father’s guidance, and she also served as
his amanuensis. Although she published her first essay in 1860
in the Cornhill Magazine, which her father edited, her work was
actually first accepted by the publisher as an anonymous
submission. She continued to write both nonfiction and fiction
regularly for the Cornhill throughout her career.
Her first novel, The Story of Elizabeth, was published in 1863,
and she continued to write fiction over the next two decades.
Her best known novels include The Village on the Green (1867),
Old Kensington (1873), Miss Angel (1875), and Mrs. Dymond
(1885). After her marriage to her cousin Richmond Thackeray
Ritchie in 1877, Ritchie turned increasingly to nonfiction
prose. She published a number of respected literary biogra-
phies, including studies of Madame de Sévigné (1881),
memoirs of T ennyson, Ruskin, and the Brownings (1892), and
also a collection of studies of English women writers, A Book of
Sibyls (1883). In 1907, when her husband was knighted for his
work in the India Office, she became Lady Ritchie, and she
became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1911.
234
JANE AUSTEN
(AUGUST 1871)
Anne Thackeray Ritchie
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 234
The following essay was prompted by the publication in
1871 of the first biography of Jane Austen, by Austen’s
nephew James Edward Austen Leigh. In the essay, which
begins with long quoted passages from Austen’s juvenilia, also
available to the public for the first time (and omitted here),
Ritchie reflects on the pleasure of reading Austen and on the
differences in the style of prose and heroines between
Austen’s generation and her own, a theme she had sounded
in 1865 in an article for Cornhill, “Heroines and Their
Grandmothers.” Evincing the interest in the connections
between an author’s life and work that she would develop in
later literary biographies, Ritchie emphasizes those aspects of
Austen’s character that seem to be reflected in her most
compelling heroines. Austen’s undoubted achievement in the
public sphere was “to write six books that were masterpieces
in their way—to make a thousand people the happier for her
industry,” Ritchie concludes, but that achievement was fully
matched by her achievement in the private sphere: “She lived
long enough to be loved by all those of her home.”
“I did not know that you were a studier of character,” says Bingley
to Elizabeth. “It must be an amusing study.”
“Yes, but intricate characters are the most amusing. They have
at least that advantage.”
“The country,” said Darcy, “can in general supply but few
subjects for such a study. In a country neighbourhood you move
in a very confined and unvarying society.”
“But people themselves alter so much,” Elizabeth answers,
“that there is something new to be observed in them for ever.”
“Yes, indeed,” cried Mrs. Bennet, offended by Darcy’s manner
of mentioning a country neighbourhood, “I assure you that we
have quite as much of that going on in the country as in town.”
Everybody was surprised, and Darcy, after looking at her for a
jane austen
235
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 235
moment, turned silently away. Mrs. Bennet, who fancied she had
gained a complete victory over him, continued her triumph.
1
these people belong to a whole world of familiar
acquaintances, who are, notwithstanding their old-fashioned dresses
and quaint expressions, more alive to us than a great many of the
people among whom we live. We know so much more about them to
begin with. Notwithstanding a certain reticence and self-control
which seems to belong to their age, and with all their quaint dresses,
and ceremonies, and manners, the ladies and gentlemen in Pride and
Prejudice and its companion novels seem like living people out of our
own acquaintance transported bodily into a bygone age, represented
in the half-dozen books that contain Jane Austen’s works. Dear books!
bright, sparkling with wit and animation, in which the homely hero-
ines charm, the dull hours fly, and the very bores are enchanting.
Could we but study our own bores as Miss Austen must have stud-
ied hers in her country village, what a delightful world this might
be!—a world of Norris’s economical great walkers, with dining-room
tables to dispose of; of Lady Bertrams on sofas, with their placid “Do
not act anything improper, my dears; Sir Thomas would not like it”;
of Bennets, Goddards, Bates’s; of Mr. Collins’s; of Rushbrooks, with
two-and-forty speeches apiece—a world of Mrs. Eltons....
2
Inimitable
woman! she must be alive at this very moment, if we but knew where
to find her, her basket on her arm, her nods and all-importance, with
Maple Grove and the Sucklings in the background. She would be
much excited were she aware how highly she is said to be esteemed
by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer,
3
who is well acquainted
with Maple Grove and Selina too. It might console her for Mr.
Knightly’s shabby marriage.
All these people nearly start out of the pages, so natural and unaf-
fected are they, and yet they never lived except in the imagination of
one lady with bright eyes, who sat down some seventy years ago to an
a serious occupation
236
1
Passage from chapter 9 of Pride and Prejudice.
2
Characters from Mansfield Park, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma.
3
Robert Lowe, later Viscount Sherbrooke (1811–92).
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old mahogany desk in a quiet country parlour, and evoked them for
us. Of her ways and belongings we read for the first time in this little
memoir written half a century after her death. For the first time we
seem to hear the echo of the voice, and to see the picture of the
unknown friend who has charmed us so long—charmed away dull
hours, created neighbours and companions for us in lonely places,
and made harmless mirth. Some one said just now that many people
seem to be so proud of seeing a joke at all, that they impress it upon
you until you are perfectly wearied by it. Jane Austen was not of these;
her humour flows gentle and spontaneous, it is no elaborate mecha-
nism nor artificial fountain, but a bright natural little stream, rippling
and trickling and sparkling every here and there in the sunshine. We
should be surprised now-a-days to hear a young lady announce herself
as a studier of character. From her quiet home in the country lane
this one read to us a real page from the absorbing pathetic humor-
ous book of human nature—a book that we can most of us under-
stand when it is translated into plain English; but of which the quaint
and illegible characters are often difficult to decipher for ourselves.
It is a study which, with all respect for Darcy’s opinion, must require
something of country-like calm and concentration, and freedom of
mind. It is difficult, for instance, for a too impulsive student not to
attribute something of his own moods to his specimens instead of
dispassionately contemplating them from a critical distance.
So we gladly welcome one more glimpse of an old friend come
back with a last greeting. All those who love her name and her work,
will prize this addition, small as it is, to their acquaintance with her.
Lady Susan is a short story complete in itself. It is very unlike her later
works in many respects, and scarcely equal to them, but the Watsons
is a delightful fragment, which might belong to any of her other histo-
ries. It is bright with talk, and character, and animation. It is a story
which is not Emma, and which is not Pride and Prejudice, but some-
thing, between the two, and which was written—so the Preface tells
us—some years before either of them was published.
1
jane austen
237
1
Here Ritchie summarizes the plot of The Watsons, with long extracts.
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•••
Emma Watson, and Tom Musgrave, and the whole town of D——
in Surrey belong, without a doubt, to the whole generation of Miss
Austen’s heroes and heroines. One would scarcely recognize Lady
Susan’s parentage if it were not so well authenticated. It must have
been written early in life, when the author was still experimentalizing
(as young authors, and alas! some old authors are apt to do) with
other people’s characters and creations, making them talk, walk, and
rehearse the play, until the real actors come on the stage; and yet even
this unpublished novelette possesses one special merit which gives so
great a charm to Miss Austen’s art. She has a gift of telling a story in
a way that has never been surpassed. She rules her places, times, char-
acters, and marshals them with unerring precision. Her machinery is
simple but complete; events group themselves so vividly and naturally
in her mind that, in describing imaginary scenes, we seem not only
to read them, but to live them, to see the people coming and going:
the gentlemen courteous and in top-boots, the ladies demure and
piquant; we can almost hear them talking to one another. No retro-
spects; no abrupt flights, as in real life: days and events follow one
another. Last Tuesday does not suddenly start into existence all out
of place; nor does 1790 appear upon the scene when we are well on
in ’21. Countries and continents do not fly from hero to hero, nor do
long and divergent adventures happen to unimportant members of
the company. With Miss Austen days, hours, minutes succeed each
other like clock-work, one central figure is always present on the
scene, that figure is always prepared for company. Miss Edwards’ curl-
papers are almost the only approach to dishabille in her stories.
There are postchaises in readiness to convey the characters from Bath
or Lyme to Uppercross, to Fullerton, from Gracechurch Street to
Meryton, as their business takes them. Mr. Knightly rides from
Brunswick Square to Hartfield, by a road that Miss Austen herself
must have travelled in the curricle with her brother, driving to
London on a summer’s day. It was a wet ride for Mr. Knightly, followed
by that never-to-be-forgotten afternoon in the shrubbery, when the
wind had changed into a softer quarter, the clouds were carried off,
a serious occupation
238
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and Emma, walking in the sunshine, with spirits freshened and
thoughts a little relieved, and thinking of Mr. Knightly as sixteen miles
off, meets him at the garden door; and everybody, I think, must be
the happier, for the happiness that one half-hour gave to Emma and
her “indifferent” lover.
There is a little extract from one of Miss Austen’s letters to a niece,
which shows that this was not chance, but careful workmanship.
“Your aunt C.,” she says, “does not like desultory novels, and is
rather fearful that yours will be too much so. That there will be too
frequent a change from one set of people to another, and that circum-
stances will be sometimes introduced of apparent consequence,
which will lead to nothing. It will not be so great an objection to me.
I allow much more latitude than she does, and think nature and spirit
cover many sins of a wandering story....”
But, though the sins of a wandering story may be covered, the
virtues of a well-told one make themselves felt unconsciously, and
without an effort. Some books and people are delightful, we can
scarce tell why; they are not so clever as others that weary and fatigue
us. It is a certain effort to read a story, however touching, that is
disconnected and badly related. It is like an ill-drawn picture, of which
the colouring is good. Jane Austen possessed both gifts of colour and
of drawing. She could see human nature as it was; with near-sighted
eyes, it is true; but having seen, she could combine her picture by her
art, and colour it from life.
In this special gift for organization she seems almost unequalled. Her
picnics are models for all future and past picnics; her combinations of
feelings, of gentlemen and ladies, are so natural and life-like that read-
ing to criticize is impossible to some of us—the scene carries us away,
and we forget to look for the art by which it is recorded. How delight-
ful the people who play at cards, and pay their addresses to one
another, and sup, and discuss each other’s affairs! Take Sir Walter Elliot
compassionating the navy and Admiral Baldwin—“nine grey hairs of a
side, nothing but a dab of powder at top—a wretched example of what
a seafaring life can do, for men who are exposed to every climate and
weather until they are not fit to be seen. It is a pity they are not knocked
on the head at once, before they reach Admiral Baldwin’s age....”
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The charm of friends of pen-and-ink is their unchangeableness.
We go to them when we want them. We know where to seek them; we
know what to expect from them. They are never preoccupied; they
are always “at home”; they never turn their backs nor walk away as
people do in real life, nor let their houses and leave the neighbour-
hood, and disappear for weeks together; they are never taken up with
strange people, nor suddenly absorbed into some more genteel soci-
ety, or by some nearer fancy. Even the most volatile among them is to
be counted upon. We may have neglected them, and yet when we
meet again there are the familiar old friends, and we seem to find our
own old selves again in their company. For us time has, perhaps,
passed away; feelings have swept by, leaving interests and recollections
in their place, but at all ages there must be days that belong to our
youth, hours that will recur so long as men forbear and women
remember, and life itself exists. Perhaps the most fashionable
marriage on the tapis no longer excites us very much, but the senti-
ment of an Emma or an Anne Elliot comes home to some of us as
vividly as ever. It is something to have such old friends who are so
young. An Emma, blooming, without a wrinkle or a grey hair, after
twenty years’ acquaintance (she was, in truth, sixty years old when we
first knew her); an Elizabeth Bennet, sprightly and charming, at over
eighty years of age....
In the Roundabout Papers
1
there is a passage about the pen and ink
friends my father loved:—
They used to call the good Sir Walter the “Wizard of the North.”
What if some writer should appear who can write so enchantingly
that he shall be able to call into actual life the people whom he
invents? What if Mignon, and Margaret, and Goetz von
Berlichingen are alive now (though I don’t say they are visible),
and Dugald Dalgetty and Ivanhoe were to step in at that open
window by the little garden yonder? Suppose Uncas and our noble
old Leather Stocking were to glide in silent? Suppose Athos,
Porthos, and Aramis should enter , with a noiseless swagger , curling
a serious occupation
240
1
Essays (1860–63) by William Thackeray.
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their moustaches? And dearest Amelia Booth, on Uncle Toby’s
arm; and Tittlebat Titmouse with his hair dyed green; and all the
Crummles company of comedians, with the Gil Blas troop; and Sir
Roger de Coverley; and the greatest of all crazy gentlemen, the
Knight of La Mancha, with his blessed squire?
1
I say to you, I look
rather wistfully towards the window, musing upon these people.
Were any of them to enter , I think I should not be very much fright-
ened. Dear old friends, what pleasant hours I have had with them!
We do not see each other very often, but when we do we are ever
happy to meet ....
Are not such friends as these, and others unnamed here, but who will
come unannounced, to join the goodly company, creations that, like
some people, do actually make part of our existence, and make us the
better for theirs? T o express some vague feelings is to stamp them. Have
we any one of us a friend in a Knight of La Mancha, a Colonel
Newcome,
2
a Sir Roger de Coverley? They live for us even though they
may have never lived. They are, and do actually make part of our lives,
one of the best and noblest parts. To love them is like a direct commu-
nication with the great and generous minds that conceived them.
It is difficult, reading the novels of succeeding generations, to deter-
mine how much each book reflects of the time in which it was written;
how much of its character depends upon the mind and the mood of
the writer. The greatest minds, the most original, have the least stamp
of the age, the most of that dominant natural reality which belongs to
all great minds. We know how a landscape changes as the day goes on,
and how the scene brightens and gains in beauty as the shadows begin
to lengthen. The clearest eyes must see by the light of their own hour.
Jane Austen’s hour must have been a midday hour: bright, unsugges-
tive, with objects standing clear, without relief or shadow. She did not
write of herself, but of the manners of her age. This age is essentially
jane austen
241
1
Characters from fiction by Scott; James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1850); Alexandre
Dumas (1802–70); Laurence Sterne (1713–68); Samuel Warren (1807–77); Dickens;
Richard Steele (1672–1729) and Joseph Addison (1672–1719); and Miguel de
Cervantes (1547–1616).
2
Character in William Thackeray’s The Newcomes (1853–55).
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an age of men and women of strained emotion, little remains of starch,
or powder, or courtly reserve. What we have lost in calm, in happiness,
in tranquillity, we have gained in intensity. Our danger is now, not of
expressing and feeling too little, but of expressing more than we feel.
There is certainly a wide difference between Miss Austen’s ladies
and, let us say, a Maggie Tulliver.
1
One would be curious to know
whether, between the human beings who read Jane Austen’s books to-
day and those who read them fifty years ago, there is as great a contrast.
Have events happened within the last fifty years, feelings changed so
rapidly as to turn many of the butterflies back into cocoons again,
wrapping them round and round with self-involved, self-inflicted expe-
riences, from which, perhaps, some higher form of moth might start
in time, if such a metempsychosis were possible in natural history.
The living writers of to-day lead us into distant realms and worlds
undreamt of in the placid and easily contented gigot age.
2
People are
gifted with wider experiences, with aspirations and emotions that
were never more sincerely spoken than they are now; but, for actual
study of character, there seems but little taste. A phase, a mood of
mind, a sympathy, is what we look for, and what we chiefly find among
the present novelists. There are leaders of the school to whom this
criticism does not apply; and yet it would be no disrespect to George
Eliot to say that we know more of her own generous sympathies and
of the inner minds of her creations than of their outward expression,
or to Mrs. Oliphant to remember more vividly what Zaidee
3
and her
sisters have felt than what they said. One reason may be, perhaps, that
characters in novels are certainly more intimate with us and on less
ceremonious terms than in Miss Austen’s days. Her heroines have a
stamp of their own. They have a certain gentle self-respect and
humour and hardness of heart in which modern heroines are a little
wanting. Whatever happens they can for the most part speak of gaily
and without bitterness. Love with them does not mean a passion so
much as an interest—deep, silent; not quite incompatible with a
a serious occupation
242
1
Heroine in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860).
2
Reference to gigot or “leg-of-mutton” sleeves, popular in the early part of the nineteenth
century.
3
Character in novel by Margaret Oliphant (1828–97).
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secondary flirtation. Marianne Dashwood’s tears are evidently meant
to be dried. Jane Bennet smiles, sighs, and makes excuses for Bingley’s
neglect. Emma passes one disagreeable morning making up her mind
to the unnatural alliance between Mr. Knightly and Harriet Smith. It
was the spirit of the age, and, perhaps, one not to be unenvied. It was
not that Jane Austen herself was incapable of understanding a deeper
feeling. In the last written page of her last written book, there is an
expression of the deepest and truest experience. Anne Elliot’s talk
with Captain Benfield is the touching utterance of a good woman’s
feelings. They are speaking of men and of women’s affections.
1
“You
are always labouring and toiling,” she says, “exposed to every risk and
hardship. Your home, country, friends, all quitted; neither time nor
life to be called your own. It would be too hard, indeed, (with a falter-
ing voice,) if a woman’s feelings were to be added to all this.”
Farther on she says, eagerly:
“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 attach-
ment and constancy were known only by woman. No! I believe
you capable of everything good and great 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 expres-
sion—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.”
She could not immediately have uttered another sentence—
her heart was too full, her breath too much oppressed.
Dear Anne Elliot!—sweet, impulsive, womanly, tender-hearted—
one can almost hear her voice, pleading the cause of all true women.
jane austen
243
1
The following passages actually occur in chapter 23 of Persuasion, in which Anne Elliott
and Captain Harville are talking about Captain Benwick. The italics are Ritchie’s.
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In those days when, perhaps, people’s nerves were stronger than they
are now, sentiment may have existed in a less degree, or have been
more ruled by judgment, it may have been calmer and more matter-
of-fact; and yet Jane Austen, at the very end of her life, wrote thus.
Her words seem to ring in our ears after they have been spoken. Anne
Elliot must have been Jane Austen herself, speaking for the last time.
There is something so true, so womanly about her, that it is impossi-
ble not to love her. She is the bright-eyed heroine of the earlier
novels, matured, chastened, cultivated, to whom fidelity has brought
only greater depth and sweetness instead of bitterness and pain.
What a difficult thing it would be to sit down and try to enumerate
the different influences by which our lives have been affected—influ-
ences of other lives, of art, of nature, of place and circumstance,—of
beautiful sights passing before our eyes, or painful ones: seasons
following in their course—hills rising on our horizons—scenes of ruin
and desolation—crowded thoroughfares—sounds in our ears, jarring
or harmonious—the voices of friends, calling, warning, encourag-
ing—of preachers preaching—of people in the street below,
complaining, and asking our pity. What long processions of human
beings are passing before us! What trains of thought go sweeping
through our brains! Man seems a strange and ill-kept record of many
and bewildering experiences. Looking at oneself—not as oneself, but
as an abstract human being—one is lost in wonder at the vast
complexities which have been brought to bear upon it; lost in wonder,
and in disappointment perhaps, at the discordant result of so great a
harmony. Only we know that the whole diapason is beyond our grasp:
one man cannot hear the note of the grasshoppers, another is deaf
when the cannon sounds. Waiting among these many echoes and
mysteries of every kind, and light and darkness, and life and death,
we seize a note or two of the great symphony, and try to sing; and
because these notes happen to jar, we think all is discordant hope-
lessness. Then come pressing onward in the crowd of life, voices with
some of the notes that are wanting to our own part—voices tuned to
the same key as our own, or to an accordant one; making harmony
for us as they pass us by. Perhaps this is in life the happiest of all expe-
rience, and to few of us there exists any more complete ideal.
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And so now and then in our lives, when we learn to love a sweet
and noble character, we all feel happier and better for the goodness
and charity which is not ours, and yet which seems to belong to us
while we are near it. Just as some people and states of mind affect us
uncomfortably, so we seem to be true to ourselves with a truthful
person, generous-minded with a generous nature; life seems less
disappointing and self-seeking when we think of the just and sweet
and unselfish spirits, moving untroubled among dinning and distract-
ing influence. These are our friends in the best and noblest sense. We
are the happier for their existence,—it is so much gain to us. They
may have lived at some distant time, we may never have met face to
face, or we may have known them and been blessed by their love; but
their light shines from afar, their life is for us and with us in its gener-
ous example; their song is for our ears, and we hear it and love it still,
though the singer may be lying dead.
Some women should raise and ennoble all those who follow after—
true, gentle and strong and tender, whom “to love is a liberal educa-
tion,” whom to have known is a blessing in our past. Is not the cry of
the children still ringing in our ears as when the poet first uttered her
noble song?
1
This little book, which has come out within the last few months,
tells with a touching directness and simplicity the story of a good and
gifted woman, whose name has long been a household word among
us, but of whose history nothing was known until this little volume
appeared. It only tells the story of a country lady, of days following
days tranquilly, of common events; and yet the history is deeply inter-
esting to those who loved the writer of whom it is written; and as we
turn from the story of Jane Austen’s life to her books again, we feel
more than ever that she, too, was one of these true friends who belong
to us inalienably—simple, wise, contented, living in others, one of
those whom we seem to have a right to love. Such people belong to
all human-kind by the very right of their wide and generous sympa-
thies, of their gentle wisdom and loveableness. Jane Austen’s life, as
jane austen
245
1
Reference to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “The Cry of the Children” (1850), written
in response to a parliamentary report on child labor.
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it is told by her nephew, is very touching, sweet, and peaceful. It is a
country landscape, where the cattle are grazing, the boughs of the
great elm-tree rocking in the wind: sometimes, as we read, they come
falling with a crash into the sweep; birds are flying about the old
house, homely in its simple rule. The rafters cross the whitewashed
ceilings, the beams project into the room below. We can see it all: the
parlour with the horsehair sofa, the scant, quaint furniture, the old-
fashioned garden outside, with its flowers and vegetables combined,
and along the south side of the garden the green terrace sloping away.
One may read the account of Catherine Morland’s home with new
interest, from the hint which is given of its likeness to the old house
at Steventon, where dwelt the unknown friend whose voice we seem
to hear at last, and whose face we seem to recognize, her bright eyes
and brown curly hair, her quick and graceful figure. One can picture
the children who are playing at the door of the old parsonage, and
calling for Aunt Jane. One can imagine her pretty ways with them, her
sympathy for the active, their games and imaginations. There is
Cassandra. She is older than her sister, more critical, more beautiful,
more reserved. There is the mother of the family, with her keen wit
and clear mind; the handsome father—“the handsome proctor,” as
he was called; the five brothers, and the cousins driving up the lane.
Tranquil summer passes by, the winter days go by; the young lady still
sits writing at the old mahogany desk, and smiling, perhaps, at her
own fancies, and hiding them away with her papers at the sound of
coming steps. Now, the modest papers, printed and reprinted, lie in
every hand, the fancies disport themselves at their will in the wisest
brains and the most foolish.
It must have been at Steventon—Jane Austen’s earliest home—that
Mr. Collins first made his appearance (Lady Catherine not objecting,
as we know, to his occasional absence on a Sunday, provided another
clergyman was engaged to do the duty of the day), and here, convers-
ing with Miss Jane, that he must have made many of his profoundest
observations upon human nature; remarking, among other things, that
resignation is never so perfect as when the blessing denied begins to
lose somewhat of its value in our estimation, and propounding his cele-
brated theory about the usual practice of elegant females. It must have
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246
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been here, too, that poor Mrs. Bennet declared, with some justice, that
once estates are entailed, one can never tell how they will go; that Mrs.
Allen’s sprigged muslin and John Thorpe’s rodomontades were woven;
that his gig was built, “curricle-hung lamps, seat, trunk, sword-case,
splashboard, silver moulding, all, you see, complete. The ironwork as
good as new, or better. He asked fifty guineas ... I closed with him
directly, threw down the money, and the carriage was mine.”
“And I am sure,” said Catherine, “I know so little of such things,
that I cannot judge whether it was cheap or dear.”
“Neither the one nor the other,” says John Thorpe.
Mrs. Palmer was also born at Steventon—the good-humoured lady
in Sense and Sensibility, who thinks it so ridiculous that her husband
never hears her when she speaks to him. We are told that Marianne
and Ellinor have been supposed to represent Cassandra and Jane
Austen; but Mr. Austen Leigh says that he can trace no resemblance.
Jane Austen is not twenty when this book is written, and only twenty-
one when Pride and Prejudice is first devised. There is a pretty descrip-
tion of the sisters’ devotion to one another; of the family party; of the
old place where Jane Austen spends the first five-and-twenty years of
her life—Steventon, where there are hedgerows winding, with green
shady footpaths within the copse; where the earliest primroses and
hyacinths are found. There is the wood-walk, with its rustic seats, lead-
ing to the meadows; the church-walk leading to the church, “which is
far from the hum of the village, and within sight of no habitation,
except a glimpse of the grey manor-house through its circling screen
of sycamores. Sweet violets, both purple and white, grow in abun-
dance beneath its south wall. Large elms protrude their rough
branches, old hawthorns shed their blossoms over the graves, and the
hollow yew-tree must be at least coeval with the church.”
Cousins, as I have said, come on the scene—a young, widowed
Comtesse de Feuillade, flying from the Revolution to her uncle’s
home. She is described as a clever and accomplished woman, inter-
ested in her young cousins, teaching them French (both Jane and
Cassandra knew French), helping in their various schemes, in their
theatricals in the barn. She eventually marries her cousin, Henry
Austen. The simple family annals are not without their romance; but
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there is a cruel one for poor Cassandra, whose lover dies abroad, and
his death saddens the whole family-party. Jane, too, “receives the
addresses” (do such things as addresses exist nowadays?) “of a gentle-
man possessed of good character and fortune, and of everything, in
short, except the subtle power of touching her heart.” One cannot
help wondering whether this was a Henry Crawford or an Elton or a
Mr. Elliot, or had Jane already seen the person that even Cassandra
thought good enough for her sister?
Here, too, is another sorrowful story. The sisters’ fate (there is a sad
coincidence and similarity in it) was to be undivided; their life, their
experience was the same. Some one without a name takes leave of Jane
one day, promising to come back. He never comes back: they hear of
his death. The story seems even sadder than Cassandra’s in its silence
and uncertainty, for silence and uncertainty are death in life to some
people.... And yet to Jane Austen there can have been no death in life.
Her sunny temper and loving heart, even though saddened, must have
reflected all the love and all the sunshine in her way.
There is little trace of such a story in Jane Austen’s books—not one
morbid word is to be found, not one vain regret. Hers was not a
nature to fall crushed by the overthrow of one phase of her manifold
life. Hers seems to have been a natural genius for life, if I may so
speak; too vivid and genuinely unselfish to fail her in her need. She
could gather every flower, every brightness along her road. Good
spirit, content, all the interests of a happy and observant nature were
hers. Her gentle humour and wit and interest cannot have failed.
It is impossible to calculate the difference of the grasp by which one
or another human being realizes existence and the things relating to
it, nor how much more vivid life seems to some than to others. Jane
Austen, while her life lasted, realized it, and made the best use of the
gifts that were hers. Yet, when her life was ending, then it was given to
her to realize the change that was at hand; and as willingly as she had
lived, she died. Some people seem scarcely to rise up to their own
work, to their own ideal. Jane Austen’s life, as it is told by her nephew,
is beyond her work, which only contained one phase of that sweet and
wise nature—the creative, observant, outward phase. For her home,
for her sister, for her friends, she kept the depth and tenderness of her
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bright and gentle sympathy. She is described as busy with her neat and
clever fingers sewing for the poor, working fanciful keepsakes for her
friends. There is the cup and ball that she never failed to catch; the
spillikens lie in an even ring where she has thrown them; there are her
letters, straightly and neatly folded, and fitting smoothly in their
creases. There is something sweet, orderly, and consistent in her char-
acter and all her tastes—in her fondness for Crabbe and Cowper,
1
in
her little joke that she ought to be a Mrs. Crabbe. She sings of an
evening old ballads to old-fashioned tunes with a low sweet voice.
Further on we have a glimpse of Jane and her sister in their
mobcaps, young still, but dressed soberly beyond their years. One can
imagine “Aunt Jane,” with her brother’s children round her knee,
telling her delightful stories or listening to theirs, with never-failing
sympathy. One can fancy Cassandra, who does not like desultory
novels, more prudent and more reserved, and somewhat less of a
playfellow, looking down upon the group with elder sister’s eyes.
2
•••
A certain Mrs. Stent comes into one of these letters “ejaculating some
wonder about the cocks and hens.” Mrs. Stent seems to have tried their
patience, and will be known henceforward as having bored Jane Austen.
They leave Steventon when Jane is about twenty-five years of age
and go to Bath, from whence a couple of pleasant letters are given us.
Jane is writing to her sister. She has visited Miss A., who, like all other
young ladies, is considerably genteeler than her parents. She is
heartily glad that Cassandra speaks so comfortably of her health and
looks: could travelling fifty miles produce such an immediate change?
“You were looking poorly when you were here, and everybody seemed
sensible of it.” Is there any charm in a hack postchaise? But if there
were, Mrs. Craven’s carriage might have undone it all. Here Mrs. Stent
appears again. “Poor Mrs. Stent, it has been her lot to be always in the
way; but we must be merciful, for perhaps in time we may come to be
jane austen
249
1
George Crabbe (1754–1832) and William Cowper (1731–1800), English poets.
2
Ritchie here quotes extracts from an 1800 letter from Austen.
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Mrs. Stents ourselves, unequal to anything and unwelcome to every-
body. Elsewhere she writes, upon Mrs. ——’s mentioning that she had
sent the Rejected Addresses
1
to Mr. H., “I began talking to her a little
about them, and expressed my hope of their having amused her. Her
answer was, ‘Oh dear, yes, very much; very droll indeed; the opening
of the house and the striking up of the fiddles!’ What she meant, poor
woman, who shall say?”
But there is no malice in Jane Austen. Hers is the charity of all clear
minds, it is only the muddled who are intolerant. All who love Emma
and Mr. Knightly must remember the touching little scene in which
he reproves her for her thoughtless impatience of poor Miss Bates’s
volubility.
2
•••
Mr. Knightly’s little sermon, in its old-fashioned English, is as appli-
cable now as it was when it was spoken.... How alive they all are; with
what grace and spirit they play their parts—all these people who were
modestly put away for so many years.
Mr. Austen died at Bath, and his family removed to Southampton.
In 1811, Mrs. Austen, her daughters, and her niece, settled finally at
Chawton, a house belonging to Jane’s brother, Mr. Knight (he is
adopted by an uncle, whose name he takes), and from Chawton all
her literary work was given to the world. Sense and Sensibility, Pride and
Prejudice, were already written; but in the next five years, from thirty-
five to forty, she set to work seriously, and wrote Mansfield Park, Emma,
and Persuasion. Any one who has written a book will know what an
amount of labour this represents.... One can picture to oneself the
little family scene which Jane describes to Cassandra. Pride and
Prejudice just come down in a parcel from town; the unsuspicious Miss
B. to dinner; and Jane and her mother setting to in the evening and
reading aloud half the first volume of a new novel sent down by the
a serious occupation
250
1
Book of parodies of contemporary poets (1812) by James (1718–1839) and Horatio
(1779–1849) Smith.
2
Ritchie here quotes passage from volume 3, chapter 7 of Emma.
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brother. Unsuspicious Miss B. is delighted. Jane complains of her
mother’s too rapid way of getting on; “though she perfectly under-
stands the characters herself, she cannot speak as they ought. Upon
the whole, however,” she says, “I am quite vain enough and well-satis-
fied enough.” This is her own criticism of Pride and Prejudice:—“The
work is rather too light, and bright, and sparkling. It wants shade. It
wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense,
if it could be had; if not, of solemn specious nonsense about some-
thing unconnected with the story—an essay on writing, a critique on
Walter Scott or the History of Bonaparte.”
And so Jane Austen lives quietly working at her labour of love, inter-
ested in her “own darling children’s” success; “the light of the home,”
one of the real living children says afterwards, speaking in the days
when she was no longer there. She goes to London once or twice. Once
she lives for some months in Hans Place, nursing a brother through an
illness. Here it was that she received some little compliments and
messages from the Prince Regent, and some valuable suggestions from
Mr. Clarke, his librarian, respecting a very remarkable clergyman. He
is anxious that she should delineate one who “should pass his time
between the metropolis and the country, something like Beattie’s
minstrel,
1
entirely engaged in literature, and no man’s enemy but his
own.” Failing to impress this character upon the authoress, he makes
a different suggestion, and proposes that she should write a romance
illustrative of the august house of Coburg. “It would be interesting,” he
says, “and very properly dedicated to Prince Leopold.”
To which Miss Austen replies: “I could no more write a romance
than an epic poem. I could not seriously sit down to write a romance
under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispen-
sable for me to keep it up, and never relax into laughing at myself or
other people, I am sure I should be hung before the first chapter.”
There is a delightful collection of friends’ suggestions which she
has put together, but which is too long to be quoted here. She calls
it, “Plan of a Novel, as suggested by various Friends.”
jane austen
251
1
James Beattie (1735–1803), Scottish philosopher and poet; The Minstrel was published
1771–74.
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All this time, while her fame is slowly growing, life passes in the
same way in the old cottage at Chawton. Aunt Jane, with her young
face and her mob-cap, makes play-houses for the children, helps them
to dress up, invents imaginary conversations for them, supposing that
they are all grown up the day after a ball. One can imagine how
delightful a game that must have seemed to the little girls. She built
her nest, did this good woman, happily weaving it out of shreds, and
ends, and scraps of daily duty, patiently put together; and it was from
this nest that she sang the song, bright and brilliant, with quaint thrills
and unexpected cadences, that reaches us even here through fifty
years. The lesson her life seems to teach us is this: don’t let us despise
our nests—life is as much made of minutes as of years; let us complete
the daily duties; let us patiently gather the twigs and the little scraps
of moss, of dried grass together; and see the result!—a whole,
completed and coherent, beautiful even without the song.
We come too soon to the story of her death. And yet did it come
too soon? A sweet life is not the sweeter for being long. Jane Austen
lived years enough to fulfil her mission. It was an unconscious one;
and unconscious teachers are the highest. They teach by their lives,
even more than by their words, and their lives need not reach three-
score years and ten to be complete. She lived long enough to write
six books that were masterpieces in their way—to make a thousand
people the happier for her industry. She lived long enough to be
loved by all those of her home.
One cannot read the story of her latter days without emotion; of
her patience, her sweetness, and gratitude. There is family trouble,
we are not told of what nature. She falls ill. 
Her nieces find her in her dressing gown, like an invalid, in an arm-
chair in her bed-room; but she gets up and greets them, and, point-
ing to seats which had been arranged for them by the fire, says:
“There is a chair for the married lady, and a little stool for you,
Caroline.” But she is too weak to talk, and Cassandra takes them away.
At last they persuade her to go to Winchester, to a well-known
doctor there.
“It distressed me,” she says, in one of her last, dying letters, “to see
Uncle Henry.”
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“And William Knight, who kindly attended us, riding in the rain
almost the whole way. We expect a visit from them to-morrow, and
hope they will stay the night; and on Thursday, which is a confirma-
tion and a holiday, we hope to get Charles out to breakfast. We have
had but one visit from him, poor fellow, as he is in the sick room....
God bless you, dear E., if ever you are ill, may you be as tenderly
nursed as I have been ....”
But nursing does not cure her, nor can the doctor save her to them
all, and she sinks from day to day. To the end she is full of concern
for others.
“As for my dearest sister, my tender, watchful, indefatigable nurse
has not been made ill by her exertions,” she writes. “As to what I owe
her, and the anxious affection of all my beloved family on this occasion,
I can only cry over it, and pray God to bless them more and more.”
One can hardly read this last sentence with dry eyes. It is her part-
ing blessing and farewell to those she had blessed all her life by her
presence and her love. Thank God that love is beyond death; and its
benediction, still with us, not only spoken in words, but by the signs
and the love of a lifetime, that does not end for us as long as we
ourselves exist.
They asked her when she was near her end if there was anything
she wanted.
“Nothing but death,” she said. Those were her last words. She died
on the 18th of July, 1817, and was buried in Winchester Cathedral,
where she lies not unremembered.
SOURCE
Cornhill Magazine 24 (August 1871).
SELECTED SECONDARY READING
Gérin, Winifred. Anne Thackeray Ritchie: A Biography. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1981.
jane austen
253
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mary arnold (1851–1920) was born in Hobart Town,
Tasmania, to a then-school inspector and eventual history
lecturer at Oxford and his wife. On the paternal side, Mary’s
family was the picture of propriety: she was the granddaughter
of the famous headmaster of Rugby and the niece of poet and
critic Matthew Arnold. On the maternal side, things were
much more complicated, as her mother’s family, the Kemps
and Sorells, had a long history of mésalliances. After her
father reconverted (for a time) from Roman Catholicism to
Anglicanism, the family moved to Oxford, where Mary was able
to improve on her boarding-school education by reading in the
Bodleian Library, eventually becoming an expert in Spanish
literature and history. She began publishing literary criticism
in 1871, with an article on El Cid in Macmillan’s Magazine.
In 1872 she married Thomas Humphry Ward, a tutor at
Brasenose College, and from this point on published almost
exclusively under the name “Mrs. Humphry Ward.” Her three
children were born over the next decade, during which time
she became a founding member of an organization aimed at
opening Oxford to women students and also became the first
secretary of Somerville College, activities that her later anti-
suffrage efforts would somewhat obscure. After the family
moved to London, she and her husband both began writing
for the Times, and Ward also wrote for a number of other peri-
odicals, including the Saturday Review and the Pall Mall
254
STYLE AND MISS AUSTEN
(DECEMBER 1884)
Mary Augusta (Mrs. Humphry) Ward
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Gazette. In 1888, her second novel, Robert Elsmere, secured her
reputation. In later life she continued as an active novelist but
also channelled her energies into anti-suffrage work, serving
as the editor of the Anti-Suffrage Review from 1908, into
support for the war effort during World War I, and into phil-
anthropic work, especially on behalf of children. She received
a CBE in 1919 and an honorary degree from Edinburgh
University shortly before her death in 1920.
The following review essay was inspired by the publication
in 1884 of the first edition of Jane Austen’s letters, edited by
her great-nephew Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen, Lord
Brabourne. The first biography of Austen, by her nephew
James Edward Austen Leigh, had appeared in 1871. Ward
takes the opportunity of reviewing the new book to reflect not
only on the state of contemporary biography but also to
comment on Austen’s characteristic style and subject matter.
While Ward finds the letters of little interest, literarily or
otherwise, she uses them as a vehicle for proactively defend-
ing Austen against charges that because she was not a politi-
cal writer, she was not an important writer. Austen may seem
to have lived through “the stormiest period of modern
European history without being touched by any of the large
fears and hopes, or even strongly impressed by any of the
dramatic characters or careers in which it abounded,” Ward
acknowledges, but that was because her gift was one of
condensation, not of expansion. Austen needs to be appre-
ciated as an artist whose genius lay in her ability to seize “at
once upon the most effective image or detail and realise at a
glance how it will strike a reader.”
by this publication of a newly-discovered collection of
Miss Austen’s letters, Miss Austen’s great-nephew has done her as ill
a turn as it is in anybody’s power to do to the author of Pride and
Prejudice. The name of one of the nimblest, quickest, and least tire-
style and miss austen
255
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some of mortals has been perforce associated with two volumes of
half-edited matter, with letters of which she herself would never have
authorised the publication, with family pedigrees of which she would
have been the first person to feel the boredom and the incongruity,
and literary criticisms of a kind to have set that keen wit of hers
moving in its most trenchant fashion. When Lord Brabourne came
into possession of those bundles of his great-aunt’s letters which Mr.
Austen Leigh, her first biographer, believed to have been lost, the
temptation to make use of them in some way was no doubt irresistible.
The virtue of literary reticence is fast becoming extinct; we have
almost indeed forgotten that it is a virtue at all. To be able to persuade
oneself that the world could possibly do without information which
it is in one’s power to give it, implies now a strength of mind so abnor-
mal and so rare, that a modern instance of it is scarcely to be found.
And the old distinction between public and private life, which still
held firmly in the days when Jane Austen and Miss Ferrier
1
refused
to give their names to any production of their pens—the old personal
reserve, which still forms part of the continental idea of the typical
Englishman—have been so rapidly swept away during the last gener-
ation, that it would be absurd nowadays to expect of any inheritor of
a great writer’s correspondence that he should form the same sort of
strict judgment on its claims to publication which would have been
natural and possible a hundred or even fifty years ago. Taste is laxer,
the public easier to please, and book-making more profitable. A
modern editor of unpublished documents, by the nature of things,
approaches his task in a more prodigal frame of mind. The whole
mood of the present day is one of greater indulgence towards what
may be called the personal side of letters than used to be the case with
our grandfathers; and the seven volumes which Mr. Froude has
devoted to the Carlyles,
2
and which, under all the circumstances,
would have been a scandal in the days of Southey and Scott, will
perhaps be accepted later on as marking the highest point of a
a serious occupation
256
1
Susan Edmonstone Ferrier (1782–1854), Scottish novelist; Ward later discusses her
novels Marriage (1818) and Inheritance (1824).
2
Historian J.A. Froude (1818–94) published several biographical works on his close
friends, Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, from 1882 on.
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tendency which has been long gathering strength and may not
improbably soon have to fight against reaction.
Lord Brabourne, then, hardly deserves serious blame for not decid-
ing as Mr. Austen Leigh would have probably decided twenty years
ago, that the newly-discovered correspondence threw practically no
fresh light on Miss Austen’s personality, and, with half-a-dozen excep-
tions, which might have seen the light in a review, had therefore
better be reserved for that family use for which it was originally
intended; but he might at least have set some bounds to his confi-
dence in the public. One small volume of these letters, carefully
chosen and skilfully edited, would have been pleasant reading
enough. They might have been used as illustrations of the novels, of
the country society or the class relations of eighty years ago, and a few
short explanations of the identity of the persons most frequently
mentioned in them would have made them sufficiently intelligible to
the general reader. As it is, the letters of the last fifteen years of Jane
Austen’s life dull the edge of whatever gentle enjoyment the reader
may have derived from the sprightliness of the earlier ones, while the
one literary merit which the collection possesses, its lightness and airi-
ness of tone, is lost in the ponderous effect of the introductory chap-
ters, with their endless strings of names and wandering criticisms on
the novels. Such editorial performance as this makes one sigh once
more for a more peremptory critical standard than any we possess in
England. What English belles-lettres of the present day want more than
anything else is a more widely diffused sense of obligation among the
cultivators of them—obligation, if one must put it pedantically, to do
the best a man can with his material, and to work in the presence of
the highest ideals and achievements of his profession.
There are, however, in these volumes a few letters which were worth
printing, and which do help to complete the picture already existing
of Jane Austen. These are the letters written between 1796 and 1799,
that is to say, during the period which witnessed the composition of
Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey. Jane
Austen at the time was a pretty, lively girl, very fond of dancing, deeply
interested in dress, and full of the same naïf interest in the other sex
with which Catherine Morland started on her Bath travels. The whole
style and miss austen
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tone indeed of this early correspondence with her sister reminds one
of an older and shrewder Catherine, and the ways of seeing and
describing to which they bear witness are exactly those to which we
owe the unflagging liveliness and gaiety of the two famous books in
which the adventures of Catherine and Elizabeth Bennett are set forth.
Northanger Abbey especially, gay, sparkling, and rapid as it is from begin-
ning to end, is the book in which the bright energy of Jane Austen’s
youth finds its gayest and freshest expression. Pride and Prejudice is witty
and sparkling too, but it probably went through many a heightening
and polishing process during the fifteen years which elapsed between
the time when it was written and the time when it appeared in print;
and although a great deal of it may represent the young Jane Austen,
the style as a whole bears marks certainly of a fuller maturity than had
been reached by the writer of Northanger Abbey. It is in the story of
Catherine Morland that we get the inimitable literary expression of
that exuberant girlish wit, which expressed itself in letters and talk and
harmless flirtations before it took to itself literary shape, and it is pleas-
ant to turn from the high spirits of that delightful book to some of the
first letters in this collection, and so to realise afresh, by means of such
records of the woman, the perfect spontaneity of the writer. Any one
who has ever interested himself in the impulsive little heroine, who
was as nearly plain as any heroine dared to be before Jane Eyre, but
whose perfect good-humour and frankness won the heart of her
Henry, will feel that in one or two of these newly-printed letters he
comes very near to the secret of Catherine’s manufacture.
Here, for instance, is a picture, pieced together from passages of
different dates, of Jane Austen in a frame of mind which has some-
thing of Catherine Morland and something of Elizabeth Bennett in it,
though it is a little too satirical and conscious for the one, and perhaps
a trifle too frivolous for the other. Tom Lefroy, the hero of the little
episode, lived to be Chief Justice of Ireland, and only died in 1854.
The first extract occurs in a letter written from Steventon in
January, 1796:—
You scold me so much in the nice long letter which I have this
moment received from you, that I am almost afraid to tell you
a serious occupation
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how my Irish friend and I behave. Imagine to yourself everything
most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting
down together. I can expose myself, however, only once more,
because he leaves the country soon after next Friday, on which
day we are to have a dance at Ashe after all. He is a very gentle-
manly, good-looking, pleasant young man, I assure you. But as
to our having ever met, except at the three last balls, I cannot say
much; for he is so excessively laughed at about me at Ashe, that
he is ashamed of coming to Steventon, and ran away when we
called on Mrs. Lefroy a few days ago....
After I had written the above, we received a visit from Mr. Tom
Lefroy and his cousin George. The latter is really very well-
behaved now; and as for the other he has but one fault, which
time will, I trust, entirely remove—it is that his morning coat is
a great deal too light. He is a very great admirer of Tom Jones,
and therefore wears the same coloured clothes, I imagine, which
he did when he was wounded.... Our party to Ashe to-morrow
night will consist of Edward Cooper, James (for a ball is nothing
without him) Buller, who is now staying with us, and I. I look
forward with great impatience to it, as I rather expect to receive
an offer from my friend in the course of the evening.
I shall refuse him however, unless he promises to give away his
white coat.... Tell Mary that I make over Mr. Heartley and all his
estate to her for her sole use and benefit in future, and not only
him, but all my other admirers into the bargain, wherever she
can find them, even the kiss which C. Powlett wanted to give me,
as I mean to confine myself in future to Mr. Tom Lefroy, for
whom I don’t care sixpence. Assure her also as a last and indu-
bitable proof of Warren’s indifference to me that he actually
drew that gentleman’s picture for me, and delivered it to me
without a sigh!
Friday (the day of the Ashe ball). At length the day has come
on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, and when you
receive this it will be over. My tears flow as I write at the melan-
choly idea.
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Slight, however, as the relation was, it seems to have been more
durable than the signs of frail vitality about it would have led one to
expect. It is not till two years later that Jane Austen herself gives it its
coup de grace in her light characteristic way. She describes a visit paid by
T om Lefroy’s aunt to Steventon, in which the nephew’s name was never
once mentioned to Jane herself, “and I was too proud to make any
inquiries; but on my father’s asking where he was, I learnt that he was
gone back to London, on his way to Ireland, where he is called to the
bar, and means to practise.” And then—alas! for the faithfulness of
woman—she flies off to describe the position in which things are with
regard to an unnamed friend of Mr. Lefroy’s, who had evidently taken
his place in her thoughts, and was rapidly succeeding to that full meas-
ure of indifference which appears to have been the ultimate portion of
all Jane’s admirers. “There is less love and more sense in it than some-
times appeared before,” she says provokingly, describing a letter from
this unknown aspirant—“and I am very well satisfied. It will all go on
exceedingly well, and decline away in a very reasonable manner.”
There are a good many other touches in these girlish letters that
give one glimpses, as it were, into the workshop which produced the
novels. “Mr. Richard Harvey,” she says on one occasion, “is going to
be married; but as it is a great secret, and only known to half the
neighbourhood, you must not mention it. The lady’s name is
Musgrave.” Again, “We have been very gay since I wrote last, dining
at Hackington, returning by moonlight and everything quite in style,
including Mr. Claringbould’s funeral which we saw go by on Sunday.”
Or, “If you should ever see Lucy, you may tell her that I scolded Miss
Fletcher for her negligence in writing, as she desired me to do, but
without being able to bring her to any proper sense of shame; that
Miss Fletcher says in her defence, that as everybody whom Lucy knew
when she was in Canterbury has now left it, she has nothing at all to
write to her about. By everybody, I suppose Miss Fletcher means that a
new set of officers has arrived there. But this is a note of my own.” Or
again, with mocking reference to some of those pomposities of
authorship which she ridicules in Northanger Abbey—“I am very much
flattered by your commendation of my last letter, for I write only for
fame, and without any view to pecuniary emolument.” Her lively pen
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touches everybody in turn. One feels there may have been something
formidable in a daughter who could put together with a few strokes
so suggestive an outline as this:—“My mother continues hearty; her
appetite and nights are very good, but she sometimes complains of
an asthma, a dropsy, water in her chest and a liver disorder.” And it is
characteristic that even her letters of grief, after the death of a
favourite sister-in-law, are broken within the first fortnight by some
flashes of terse satire on the affairs of the neighbourhood.
Some little pleasure and entertainment then may be gleaned, by
those who already know their Miss Austen, from the first dozen letters
or so of this collection. They fill up a gap in Mr. Austen Leigh’s book.
The turn of phrase is generally light and happy; and they enable us to
realise something of that buoyant and yet critical enjoyment of life, of
which the six novels were the direct outcome. But after all, there is very
little personal or literary distinction in them; the judgment of an
unfriendly Frenchman would probably find that note of “common-
ness” in them which Madame de Staël
1
insisted in attributing to Pride
and Prejudice. And commonness indeed there is, using the word, that
is to say, not in any strong or disagreeable sense, but simply as opposed
to distinction, charm, aroma, or any of those various words by which
one tries to express that magical personal quality of which Madame de
Sévigné
2
is the typical representative in literature. And even the gaiety
and moderate felicity of phrase which beguiled on through the earlier
letters disappears from the later correspondence. The writer of it
indeed is the same kindly, blameless, and gently humorous person as
the Jane Austen of 1796, but whereas at twenty-one Jane Austen’s
letters were like her novels, and therefore may be said to possess some
slight claim to belong to literature, by thirty-one they had become the
mere ordinary chit-chat of the ordinary gentlewoman, with no claims
whatever to publication or remembrance beyond the family circle.
Lord Brabourne’s book indeed only impresses upon us with fresh
force what was already fairly well-known—that broadly speaking, the
style and miss austen
261
1
Germaine de Staël (1766–1816), French-Swiss essayist and novelist. Her most popular
novel was Corinne (1807).
2
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Madame de Sévigné (1626–96), French letter-writer.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 261
whole yield of Jane Austen’s individuality is to be found in her novels.
There are a certain number of facts about her which help to explain
her books, and which are of use to the student of the psychological
side of letters, but these were already within everybody’s reach, so that
the collection printed by Lord Brabourne is as a whole neither amus-
ing nor sufficiently instructive to make it worth publication.
The triviality of the letters is easily explained. No circumstances
were ever less favourable than Jane Austen’s to good letter-writing.
She possessed one literary instrument which she used with extraor-
dinary skill and delicacy—the instrument of critical observation as
applied to the commoner types and relations of human life. Within
the limits fixed for her by temperament and circumstances she
brought it to bear with unrivalled success, success which has placed
her amongst English classics. But she was practically a stranger to what
one may call, without pedantry, the world of ideas. The intellectual
and moral framework of her books is of the simplest and most
conventional kind. The author of Corinne, placed as she was in the
very centre of the European stress and tumult, might well think them
too tame and commonplace to be read. Great interests, great ques-
tions, were life and breath to Madame de Staël as they were to her
successor George Sand.
1
She realised the continuity of human history,
the great fundamental laws and necessities underlying all the outward
tangle and complication. And it was this insight, this far-reaching
sympathy, which gave her such power over her time, and made her
personality and her thoughts “incalculably diffusive.” Meanwhile Jane
Austen, in her Hampshire home, seems to have lived through the
stormiest period of modern European history without being touched
by any of the large fears and hopes, or even strongly impressed by any
of the dramatic characters or careers in which it abounded. Though
the letters extend from 1796 to 1817, there is barely a mention of
politics in them, except in some small personal connection, and of
the literary forces of the time—Goethe, Byron, Wordsworth—there
is hardly a trace. Even when she comes to London, though we have
an occasional bare record of a visit to a theatre, we still hear of nothing
a serious occupation
262
1
Pen name of Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin (1804–76), French novelist.
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except sisters, cousins, neighbours, the price of “Irish,” and the new
fashions in caps. And for the rest, Kent and Hampshire, with their
county families, their marryings and christenings, their dancings and
charities, are the only world she knows or cares to know. She never
seems to have had a literary acquaintance, or to have desired to make
one. While Miss Ferrier’s wits were quickened by the give and take of
Edinburgh society in its best days, and Miss Edgeworth
1
found herself
welcomed with extravagant flattery on the Continent as the repre-
sentative of English culture, all the literary influence that Jane Austen
ever experienced was due to her father, and all the literary influence
she ever personally exerted was brought to bear upon a novel-writing
niece. No doubt if she had lived a little longer things would have been
different. When she died, at the age of forty-one, her books had
already brought her some fame, and friends would have followed. As
it was, her circle of interests, both intellectual and personal, was a
narrower one than that of any other writer we can remember with the
same literary position.
In spite, however , of her narrow Weltanschauung, and her dearth of liter-
ary relationships, Jane Austen is a classic, and Pride and Prejudice will prob-
ably be read when Corinne, though not its author, is forgotten. Her life is
a striking proof that a great novelist may live without a philosophy, and
die with out ever having belonged to a literary coterie. But out of the stuff
of which the life was composed it was impossible to make a good letter-
writer . T o be a good letter-writer a man or woman must either have ideas,
or sentiments strong enough to take the place of ideas, or knowledge of
and contact with what is intrinsically interesting and important. Jane
Austen had none of these. The graphic portraiture of men and women
seen from the outside, in which she excelled, was not possible in letters.
It required more freedom, more elbow-room than letters could give. Jane
Austen, in describing real people, found herself limited by the natural
scruples of an amiable and gentle nature. There was a short time when
the exuberance of her talent overflowed a little into her correspondence.
But it soon came to an end, and for the rest of her life Jane Austen’s letters
were below rather than above the average in interest, point and charm.
style and miss austen
263
1
Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849), Irish novelist.
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Miss Austen’s novels are a well-worn subject. We have all read her, or
ought to have read her; we all know what Macaulay
1
and what Scott
thought of her; and the qualities of her humour , the extent of her range
have been pointed out again and again. Perhaps, after all, however, it
may be still worth while to try and face the question which these disap-
pointing letters bring home to one. How was it that, with all her lack of
knowledge and of ideas, and with her comparative lack of passion, which
so often supplies the place of both, Jane Austen accomplished work so
permanent and so admirable? What is it, in a word, which makes Pride
and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey English classics, while the books of her
contemporaries, Miss Ferrier and Miss Edgeworth, have practically lost
their hold upon our sympathies, and are retreating year by year into a
dimmer background? There are two kinds of qualities which go to the
making of a classic. There are the qualities of expansion and the quali-
ties of concentration. The great books of the world are rich in both. If
you compare Chaucer’s and Gower’s treatment of the same theme—the
subject of the Man of Lawes T ale,
2
for instance—you will see not only that
Chaucer’s treatment is light and rapid where Gower’s is heavy and
prolix, but that Chaucer knew where, as the French would say, to “lean,”
where to dwell, where to expand. You may trace this poetic expansion
at work in all the great moments or crises of the story. Gower plods on
through the trial of Constance for the murder of Dame Hermengild,
and through the various incidents which accompany it, with no varia-
tion of tone or pace. Chaucer, when he has brought Constance face to
face with her enemies, pauses, as any true poet would, and lets the
tragedy of the situation penetrate himself and his readers.
Have ye not seyn sometyme a palë face
Among a prees, of him that hath be lad
Toward his deth, wher as him gat no grace,
And swich a colour in his face hath had,
Men mightë knowe his face, that was bistad
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264
1
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–59), historian and MP.
2
“The Man of Law’s Tale” is the fifth of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (ca. 1387). The story
is also told in John Gower’s (1330–1408) Confessio Amantis (ca. 1390s). Ward goes on
to mention other works by Chaucer.
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Amongës alle faces in that route:
So stant Custance, and looketh hir aboute.
O queenës, lyuinge in prosperitee
Duchesses, and ladyës euerich one
Haueth some rewthe on hir aduersitee;
An emperourës doughter stant allone;
She hath no wight to whom to make hir mone.
O blood roial! that stondest in this drede,
Fer ben thy frendës at thy gretë nede!
And a little further on there is a still more striking instance of it, in
the exquisite scene between Constance and her child before she is
turned adrift on the Northumbrian coast. As for the qualities of conden-
sation they may be traced in the Troilus and Cressid as compared with the
Filostrato and in the Knightes Tale, and elsewhere. But the qualities of
expansion develop first in the literary history of the world; those of
concentration come later, and the human mind takes longer to fashion
the instruments which fit and display them. Although a great writer will
have both in some measure, the proportion in which he possesses them
will depend upon his date. The progress of literary expression during
the last two hundred years has on the whole, and making due allowance
for the vast stores of new material which have found their way into liter-
ature since Rousseau, been a progress towards concentration. Literature
tends more and more to become a kind of shorthand. The great writ-
ers of this generation take more for granted than the great writers of the
last, and the struggle to avoid commonplace and repetition becomes
more and more diffused. The mind of the modern writer is on the
whole most anxiously concerned with this perpetual necessity for omis-
sion, for compression. It will never describe if it can suggest, or argue if
it can imply. The first condition of success in letters is nowadays to avoid
vapouring, and to wage war upon those platitudes we all submit to with
so much cheerful admiration in our Richardson or our Spectator.
1
style and miss austen
265
1
Samuel Richardson (1689–1761), English novelist. The Spectator was a popular daily peri-
odical published in 1711–12 and 1714.
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It was her possession of the qualities of condensation that made
Jane Austen what she was. Condensation in literary matters means an
exquisite power of choice and discrimination—a capacity for isolat-
ing from the vast mass of detail which goes to make up human life
just those details and no others which will produce a desired effect
and blend into one clear and harmonious whole. It implies the deter-
mination to avoid everything cheap and easy—cheapness in senti-
ment, in description, in caricature. In matters of mere language it
means the perpetual effort to be content with one word rather than
two, the perpetual impulse to clip and prune either than expand and
lengthen. And if to this temper of self-restraint you add the imagina-
tion which seizes at once upon the most effective image or detail and
realises at a glance how it will strike a reader, and a spontaneous
interest in men and women as such, you have arrived at the compo-
nent parts of such a gift as Jane Austen’s. Nothing impresses them
more strongly upon the reader than a comparison of her work with
that of her slightly younger contemporary, Miss Ferrier. Miss Ferrier
had a great deal of humour, some observation, and a store of natural
vigour which made her novels welcome to the generation of Scott and
Byron. Stronger expressions of praise were used to her and about her
than ever seem to have suggested themselves to any contemporary
admirer of Miss Austen, and the author of Marriage was encouraged
to believe that her work would rank with that of Scott as a represen-
tation of Scottish life and manners. But we who read Miss Ferrier with
an interval of fifty years between us and her can judge the propor-
tions of things more clearly. Miss Ferrier is scarcely read now, except
for the sake of satisfying a literary curiosity, and will gradually drop
more and more out of reading. And it is very easy to understand why,
if one does but approach her books with these qualities of expansion
and concentration which go to make up a classic in one’s mind. She
has little or no faculty of choice, nothing is refused that presents itself;
reflections, love-making, incident, are all superabundant and second
rate. Everything is done to death, whether it is Miss Pratt’s bustle, or
Lady Julianna’s finery, or Mr. McDow’s brutality, and as for the senti-
ment—these reflections from the first volume of the Inheritance are a
fair average specimen of it.
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“Ah,” thought Gertrude, “how willingly would I renounce all
pomp of greatness to dwell here in lowly affection with one who
would love me and whom I could love in return. How strange that
I, who could cherish the very worm that crawls beneath my feet,
have no one being to whom I could utter the thoughts of my
heart, no one on whom I could bestow its best affections!” She
raised her eyes, swimming in tears to heaven, but it was in the
poetic enthusiasm of feeling, not in the calm spirit of devotion!
There is no particular reason why writing of this kind should ever
stop; there is nothing intimate and living in it, none of that wrestle of
the artist with experience which is the source of all the labours and
all the trials of art; it is all conventional, traditional, hearsay in fact.
The qualities of concentration are altogether wanting. But now, put
side by side with Gertrude’s sentiment or Mrs. Sinclair’s remorse,
some of the mental history of Jane Austen’s dramatis personae, and the
gulf which this marvellous choosing faculty digs between one writer
and another will be plain at once. Anne Eliot, in Persuasion, has
arrived at the critical moment of her fate. The man whom she had
rejected seven years before has reappeared upon the scene, and as
soon as she is brought in contact with him all lesser affections and
inclinations, which had been filling up the time of his absence, disap-
pear. Others might have had a chance if he had remained away, but
his return, his neighbourhood, rouses a feeling which sweeps all
before it. This is the situation. We may imagine, if Miss Ferrier had
had to deal with it, how she would have spun it out; with what
raptures, what despairs, what appeals to heaven she would have
embroidered it! But Jane Austen at once seizes upon the vital points
of it, and puts them before us, at first with a sober truth, and then
with a little rise into poetry, which is a triumph of style.
“There was much regret,” she says, in her analysis of Anne’s feel-
ings towards the man she had resolved to sacrifice to her old lover.
“How she might have felt had there been no Captain Wentworth in
the case is not worth inquiring; for there was a Captain Wentworth,
and be the conclusion of the present suspense good or bad, her affec-
tion would be his for ever. Their union, she believed, could not divide
style and miss austen
267
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her more from other men than their final separation. Prettier
musings of high-wrought love and eternal constancy could never have
passed along the streets of Bath than Anne was sporting with from
Camden Place to Westgate Buildings. It was almost enough to spread
purification and perfume all the way.” How terse it is, how suggestive,
how free from vulgarity and commonplace!
Another striking instance of this choosing instinct of hers is the
description of Darcy’s place, Pemberley, in Pride and Prejudice. There,
although there is scarcely any description at all, every stroke of the
pen is so managed that any reader with ordinary attention may
realise, if he pleases, the whole lie of the park, the look of the house,
as Elizabeth surveyed it from the opposite side of the ravine above
which it stood, the relative positions of the lawns, stables, and woods.
Anybody with a turn that way could sketch it with ease, and yet there
is no effort, no intention to describe, nothing but a clear and vivid
imagination working with that self-restraint, that concentration,
which is the larger half of style. This self-restraint indeed is her impor-
tant, her determining quality. In other ways she has great deficien-
cies. For fine instances of the qualities of expansion we must go
elsewhere than to Jane Austen. Emotion, inspiration, glow, and
passion are not hers; she is a small, thin classic. But classic she is; for
her work is a typical English embodiment of those drier and more
bracing elements of style in which French literature has always been
rich, and our own perhaps comparatively poor.
SOURCE
Macmillan’s 51 (December 1884).
SELECTED SECONDARY READING
Sutherland, John. Mrs. Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-Eminent
Edwardian. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.
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helen blackburn (1842–1903) was born in County
Kerry, Ireland, and moved to London with her parents in
1859. Her father was a civil engineer who in 1877 patented
a forerunner of the automobile. She first became involved
with the women’s rights movement, centred around Barbara
Leigh Smith Bodichon and Bessie Rayner Parkes at Langham
Place in London, in her twenties. By the 1870s she was an
active participant, serving as secretary of the National
Women’s Suffrage Society from 1874 to 1895 and of the
Bristol and West of England Suffrage Committee from 1880
to 1895. She was also a founding member, with Lydia Becker,
of the Liberty and Property Defence League. Blackburn’s
1902 book, Women’s Suffrage, is a standard text about the early
years of the British women’s movement, and her library,
which she bequeathed to Girton College, Cambridge, is a vital
repository of original documents.
In 1881, after having first contributed a number of articles
and reviews, Blackburn became the third editor of the
Englishwoman’s Review, a successor of the respected and influ-
ential English Woman’s Journal. The Englishwoman’s Review,
published from 1866 to 1910, was founded by Jessie
Boucherett with an unabashedly feminist agenda. In her first
editorial column on “The Work We Have to Do,” Boucherett
had declared that a periodical was “imperatively required”
that would examine “the sources whence spring the evils
269
WOMEN’S BOOKS—A POSSIBLE LIBRARY
(MAY 1889)
Helen Blackburn
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which oppress women ... as well as the evils themselves”
(October 1866). Blackburn continued Boucherett’s
program, documenting the progress of the women’s move-
ment and exhorting women to “look not backward, but
rather forward” (January 1890). She continued to edit the
journal until she left to care for her dying father in 1895.
“Women’s Books—A Possible Library” was published in
1889, just two years before Blackburn assumed the editorship
of the Englishwoman’s Review. In this article, Blackburn cata-
logues notable British women writers from the fifteenth
century on. Her project is twofold. First, she wishes to estab-
lish the significant literary achievements of women, especially
her near contemporaries, and to demonstrate that women
have established themselves in fields other than fiction and
poetry—being careful to include “those who edit.” But
second, Blackburn also wants to defend women writers from
charges of inferiority. Thus, a full generation before Virginia
Woolf, Blackburn is engaged in the kind of feminist recovery
project represented by A Room of One’s Own (1929) and that
second-wave feminists would resume in the 1970s.
what is the impression which a library composed
exclusively of books written by women would make on the mind?
Would there be anything gained by collecting the works of women
apart from the works of men? Would a sense of despondency creep
over us at the comparatively small space such a library would occupy
in the world’s literature, or would it create a sense of surprise, that
cut off as women have been from so much of the world’s culture,
they have added so much to its literature? Should we be struck most
by the amount of useless and ephemeral, or by the amount of good
and sterling work?
Such questions as these are suggested by the plan lately set on foot
in Paris to form a library of women’s books. We might be able to
answer them to some extent by imagining ourselves in a library
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270
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wherein should be gathered together all the books written by women
in the British Isles.
Let us look round. What an over-weening number of novels will
first strike the eye—many three-volumed sets rapidly becoming invis-
ible in the dust of oblivion, but not all; a goodly array are fresh and
clean with the light of daily use. English classics cannot afford to lose
their Jane Austen, thrilling the dullest commonplace existence with
a sense of living reality; nor their Brontë’s vivid power; nor the piti-
less dissection of human motive of their George Eliot; and the youth
of the land cannot spare, and long may they be unable to spare, the
healthful experience of life and the recreation from work which those
goodly rows of Mrs. Gaskell, Mrs. Craig, Miss Yonge, Miss Thackeray,
Mrs. Oliphant, Mrs. Marshall
1
afford them. Let us not miss either that
dear old friend, The Cottagers of Glenburnie, nor our newer friend, That
Lass o’ Lowrie’s;
2
—surely these, and more than these, will defy the
sedulous dust for many a day.
And next we may look for the poets: Mrs. Hemans, L.E.L., their
sweet songs grow dusty, and Joanna Baillie; but not till each has set
her mark on her day, though it be a less enduring niche than those
carved by the strong strains of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, or by the
deep pathos of Adelaide Ann Proctor,
3
or by the dramatic force of
some who yet live and write amongst us.
No Shakespeare though, mutters the critic. How many Shakespeares,
sir critic, has the world yet seen that you expect his rival to appear
already? Patience please, and let us proceed. Here we come to travels,
for women have shared many opportunities of travel, and travelling
they have observed much to record, and recording they have displayed
power of description which will make these volumes often valued
sources, not only of entertainment, but of knowledge. Sorry, indeed,
women’s books—a possible library
271
1
Popular English and Scottish novelists: Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–65), Dinah Mulock
Craik (1826–87), Charlotte Yonge (1823–1901), Anne Thackeray Ritchie
(1837–1919), Margaret Oliphant (1828–97), and Emma Marshall (1830–99).
2
Novels published in 1808 and 1877 by Scottish novelist Eliza Hamilton (1758–1816)
and American-born Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849–1924).
3
Popular Romantic and Victorian poets: Felicia Hemans (1793–1835), Laetitia Elizabeth
Landon (1802–38), Joanna Baillie (1762–1851), Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(1806–61), and Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–64).
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would our literature be to miss Lady Duff Gordon’s Letters from the Nile,
or Miss Edwards’ Thousand Miles down the Ancient River, or Miss Gordon
Cumming’s oceanic experiences;
1
or—but we must not attempt to
enumerate, but pass on from descriptions of external scenes to descrip-
tions of the lives of fellow-men and women—memoirs edited, perhaps,
by the wife who had shared the life she now records—and here spring
to memory a Baroness Bunsen, a Mrs. Kingsley
2
—or edited for friend-
ship’s or for admiration’s sake—and we look for Mrs. Gaskell’s Life of
the Brontës, Mrs. Butler’s St. Catherine, Mrs. Oliphant’s St. Francis, Mrs.
Venturi’s Mazzini,
3
and then insensibly we find ourselves at the shelves
of history; Miss Strickland’s Lives of the Queens of England, Mrs. W.H.
Green’s recent Henry II.:
4
nor let us omit the labours of those who edit.
Shall not our library contain amongst the works of women those calen-
dars of State papers which Mrs. Everett Green has so laboriously and
carefully edited for the benefit of historical students,
5
and periodical
literature where women editors store facts for the historians of the
future, amongst which the ENGLISHWOMAN’S REVIEW itself (permit the
personal remark, dear editor) should find a place.
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272
1
Travel writer and translator Lady Lucie Duff Gordon (1821–69) published several
volumes of letters about her travels in Africa; Blackburn probably refers to her Letters
from Egypt (1865). Novelist and Egyptologist Amelia Edwards (1831–92) published A
Thousand Miles Up the Nile in 1877. Scottish journalist and Church Missionary Society
worker Constance Gordon-Cumming (1837–1924) published numerous articles in
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and elsewhere, including “Across the Yellow Sea” (1882).
2
Frances, Baroness Bunsen (1791–1896) published a memoir of her husband Christian
Carl Josias von Bunsen (1791–1860), ambassador to Britain from the court of
Friederich Wilhelm IV, king of Prussia; Frances Eliza Grenfell Kingsley (1814–91)
edited the Letters and Memories (1877) of her husband, novelist Charles Kingsley
(1819–75). 
3
Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë was published in 1857. Social activist and journalist
Josephine Butler’s (1828–1906) Catharine of Sienna appeared in 1878. Oliphant’s Francis
of Assisi (1870) was just one of many biographies she wrote or edited. Emilie Ashurst
Venturi (d. 1893) published several books, translations, and articles on the Italian
patriot Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–72), including an 1872 biography.
4
Agnes Strickland (1796–1874) published 12 volumes of Lives of the Queens of England
between 1840 and 1848, with significant contributions from her sister Elizabeth
(1794–1875). Irish historian Alice Stopford (Mrs. J.R.) Green’s (1848–1929) Henry the
Second was published in 1888; Blackburn seems to have confused Green’s husband with
the biblical scholar William Henry Green.
5
Archivist Mary Anne Everett Green (1818–95) edited the first ten volumes of the
Calendar of State Papers of the Public Record Office (1860).
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Translations will also have their place assigned—translations from
many tongues, ancient and modern; Miss Swanwick’s Aeschylus will
be there, and Mrs. Webster’s Euripides and Miss Martineau’s abridg-
ment of the positive philosophy.
1
The name of Harriet Martineau
suggests not only philosophy, but history and political economy; and
this again recalls Mrs. Marcet’s volumes—those conversations on
political economy and on chemistry to which many of the generation
now grown old owe their first interest in these great subjects—as do
many of the now rising generation owe theirs to Mrs. Fawcett’s
Handbook of Political Economy, and Miss Buckley’s Fairy Tales of Science.
2
Mrs. Somerville will fill the place of honour in these shelves—and
beside her Miss Clerk, bringing the newest knowledge of the starry
firmament to the attention of the readers of to-day.
3
If none of the
greatest original discoveries are associated with women, they have
assuredly filled an important part in popularizing the results of the
labours of discoverers. From science to art seems a natural transition,
and here what grateful memories rise to many of us at the sight of
Mrs. Jameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art, and the companion volumes
which have taught us appreciation of the beauties and sympathy with
the feelings of early continental art; and fitly by the side of Mrs.
Jameson stand Miss Stokes’ labours on Celtic art.
4
Next we shall reach
philosophy—philosophy of the ideal with Miss Cobbe’s ethics; philos-
women’s books—a possible library
273
1
Anna Swanwick (1813–99) published her translation of Aeschylus’s plays in 1873 and
also translated Goethe’s works; poet and playwright Augusta Webster’s (1837–94) trans-
lation of Medea was published in 1868; Martineau’s condensed translation of Auguste
Comte’s Positive Philosophy appeared in 1852–53.
2
Martineau’s Illustrations of Political Economy (1832–34) was instrumental in popularizing
economic theory. Jane Haldimand Marcet (1769–1858) published a “Conversations
on” series of scientific and philosophical books for children; suffragist Millicent Garret
Fawcett’s (1847–1929) Political Economy for Beginners was published in 1870; Arabella
Burton Buckley (1840–1929) published The Fairy-Land of Science in 1879 and was the
author of other educational books for children.
3
Scottish mathematician and scientist Mary Fairfax Greig Somerville (1780–1872)
published a number of highly respected scientific texts between 1831 and 1868; physi-
cist Agnes Mary Clerke (1842–1907) published a number of works in astronomy, includ-
ing A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century (1886).
4
Art historian and critic Anna Jameson’s (1794–1860) Sacred and Legendary Art was
published in 1848; Margaret Stokes (1832–1900) wrote and edited a number of works
on Irish art and architecture.
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ophy of the practical work of the philanthropist, with Miss Carpenter’s
Juvenile Delinquents, and the Misses Davenport Hill’s Children of the
State.
1
Yet still what diverse subjects remain—papers and short stud-
ies exhumed from transactions; pamphlets, reports and blue books
should be gathered here, to say nothing of the important province of
education and children’s literature to which so many of the best
women have contributed of their best powers.
But we must pause—for suddenly we notice that every book
referred to hitherto has been written within the present century, most
within the present reign, and our library should be for all centuries.
Let us change our point of view, and instead of passing from
subject to subject, pass from century to century. The shelves for all
the previous centuries put together will be few compared to those of
the nineteenth century, flooded as it is by the printer’s art; but though
the elder works be few their subjects will be various. Perhaps the
oldest book of all will be the Treatise on Hawking and Fishing, written
by Juliana Berners, Prioress of Sopwell
2
—a curious subject from
which to start, but suggesting that in the fifteenth century men and
women had some common share in recreative pursuits. We shall not
find much else for that century, but the sixteenth should be repre-
sented by a fair number of the translations—from Italian, French and
the classics—on which the scholarly women of the Tudor period exer-
cised their learning rather than on original writings. The seventeenth
century, when the lack of the educational endowments swept away by
the Reformation, had begun to make itself seriously felt and educa-
tion had sunk to its lowest ebb, will yield but scanty contribution. The
Duchess of Newcastle’s dramas and Mary Astell’s various essays, urging
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274
1
Feminist journalist Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) published an Essay on Intuitive
Morals (1855) and Darwinism in Morals (1872), as well as numerous books and
pamphlets on women’s rights; Mary Carpenter’s (1807–77) Juvenile Delinquents (1855)
directly shaped legislation on juvenile offenders. Florence Davenport Hill (1829–1919)
published Children of the State in 1868; Blackburn either mistakenly attributes the work
as a joint effort of Florence and her sister Rosamond (1825–1902) or assumes social
worker Octavia Hill (1838–1912) is another sibling.
2
Juliana Berners (b. ca. 1368) probably was not the prioress of Sopwell Abbey, but she
does appear to have contributed the hawking and hunting sections to the 1486 Book of
St. Albans.
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a more serious estimate of the place of women in life, will redeem it
from vacuity,
1
and thanks perhaps to these, the eighteenth century
will be less poverty-stricken—at any rate we shall have Miss Elizabeth
Elstob’s Anglo-Saxon Grammar, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Letters
from the East, and Lady Pakington’s Whole Duty of Man—for though
attributed to several learned divines, the evidence points rather to
that lady’s authorship.
2
And then, as the century grows older, we shall
come to a remarkable trio of women—women who each in her own
line ushered in that new order which is fulfilling itself in the life of
our own day. Hannah More, the pioneer of the practical philanthropy
which is so distinctive a feature of the present century, published her
first poem in 1773.
3
Mary Wollstonecraft championed the wider lives
of women by her Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1791, giving the
impetus which has gone forward ever since.
4
Maria Edgeworth
published in 1798 the earliest of the long series of books which have
won for her the earliest niche of enduring fame amongst the women
novelists of the British Isles.
5
Slight as this sketch is, touching as with mere finger tips salient
books here and there, yet it may suffice to indicate the broad general
impressions our imagined library might convey; how the value of the
work done by women in literature bears a steady proportion to the
position attained in means of culture. Thousands of women must
have been originals in the sense of finding out thoughts, facts, ideas
for themselves; few can be original as the world reckons originality,
women’s books—a possible library
275
1
Poet and playwright Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623–74) published
two volumes of plays in the 1660s; writer Mary Astell (1666–1731) established her repu-
tation with A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694).
2
Elizabeth Elstob’s (1683–1758) Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue was
published in 1715; poet Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s (1689–1762) Embassy Letters were
published in 1763. First published in 1658, the authorship of the devotional book The
Whole Duty of Man is still uncertain, although it has been variously attributed to clergy-
men Richard Allestree (1619–81) and Richard Sterne (1596–1683) and to Lady
Dorothy Coventry Pakington (d. 1679), who was noted for her piety.
3
Poet and religious writer Hannah More (1745–1833), best known for her writings on
abolition and female education and for her Cheap Repository Tracts (1795–98).
4
Pioneering English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97).
5
Anglo-Irish novelist Maria Edgeworth (1767–1849) also published works on female
education and didactic tales for children.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 275
that is finding out or doing what has never been known or done
before, for such originality is only possible when you first know all that
has been already discovered. Then and then only can man or woman
have an appreciable chance of forming a combination of ideas which
shall be new for the world as well as for the individual. This chance,
rare at best, is of necessity rarest for those whose access to knowledge
has been barred more or less—generally more rather than less—
throughout historic time.
Again, our library indicates that the works produced by women in
this quarter of a century alone contain more of intrinsic worth than
all the previous generations, from Juliana Berners to Hannah More.
Such an indication as this should tend to heighten the increasing
respect for women’s capacities, increase respect for their latent
powers in the hearts of women themselves, and respect for the value
of women’s work in the hearts of men.
SOURCE
Englishwoman’s Review 20 (15 May 1889).
SELECTED SECONDARY READING
Davies, Stephen. Libertarian Feminism in Britain, 1860–1910.
Libertarian Alliance Pamphlet 7. London: Libertarian
Alliance/British Association of Libertarian Feminists, 1987.
Lacey, Candida Ann, ed. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and the Langham
Place Group. New York: Routledge, 1986.
Robinson, Solveig C. “‘Amazed at Our Success’: The Langham Place
Editors and the Emergence of a Feminist Critical Tradition.”
Victorian Periodicals Review 28.2 (1995): 159–72.
a serious occupation
276
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 276
eliza lynn (1822–98) was born in Crosthwaite,
Cumberland, the youngest of 12 children of an Anglican cler-
gyman and his wife. Eliza’s mother, who was the daughter of
the Bishop of Carlisle, died when Eliza was an infant.
Neglected by her father and tormented by her elder siblings,
Eliza retreated into books, teaching herself French, Italian,
German, and Spanish, as well as some Greek and Latin. At
age 23, she convinced her father to allow her to go to London
to establish a career as a writer. After publishing two histori-
cal novels—Azeth the Egyptian (1846) and Amymone (1848)—
in 1849 she secured a job with the Morning Chronicle,
becoming the first salaried woman newspaper journalist in
Britain. She left the post after two years and worked for awhile
as a foreign correspondent in Paris, in the meantime publish-
ing her first contemporary novel, Realities (1851). In 1853 she
began writing for Dickens’s Household Words.
In 1858 she married the radical engraver William James
Linton, a widower with a large family. The marriage seems to
have been largely one of convenience, and it ended in a sepa-
ration. William emigrated to the United States in 1867,
although several of his children remained in Eliza’s care. To
support her new family, Lynn Linton increased her literary
output. She was invited by the former editor of the Morning
Chronicle, John Douglas Cook, to join the staff of the Saturday
Review, and throughout the 1860s and 1870s she published a
277
LITERATURE: THEN AND NOW
(APRIL 1890)
Eliza Lynn Linton
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 277
series of highly entertaining essays of social and literary criti-
cism, most notably the scathing “Girl of the Period” (1868),
which was reissued under her own name in 1883. She also
wrote regularly for the Fortnightly Review and other periodicals.
The anti-feminist theme of her “Girl of the Period” essay
recurs in many of Lynn Linton’s novels, including The Rebel
of the Family (1880) and The One Too Many (1894). Her
ambiguous feelings about her sexuality and her contradictory
attitudes about professional women are explored in her
fictional autobiography, The Autobiography of Christopher
Kirkland (1885), in which she assumes a male persona, and
in her posthumous memoir, My Literary Life (1899).
In addition to its anti-feminism, an identifying element of
Lynn Linton’s writing is her relative conservatism, both social
and literary. In “Literature: Then and Now,” which originally
appeared in the Fortnightly Review, Lynn Linton compares the
past to the present—and the present, as ever, comes up short.
In earlier times, Lynn Linton asserts, literature may already
have been “a profession,” but its practitioners were “gentle-
men and scholars—men who neither sold their conscience
nor prostituted their talents.” Furthermore, literary critics
were conscientious defenders of standards and principles. By
contrast, the writers and critics of the late nineteenth century
are characterized by Lynn Linton as mere self-serving hacks,
producing “frothy” literature and partisan criticism. Lynn
Linton’s own highly allusive style—a style explicitly directed
towards educated readers—clearly indicates her affiliation
with the previous generation, those “representatives of the
grand old philosophers,” and the literary standards she
believes should be reintroduced.
literature, among other things , has passed through
phases so different asto be in themselves transformations. From the
time when the Roman man of letters assembled his friends to hear him
a serious occupation
278
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 278
read from his own manuscript a new treatise on the Nature of the Gods,
or his last new ode of perfect polish and completeness, up to now when
we go to first nights to support a friend’s play, or give private invitations
for a drawing-room recital, there have been changes in method and
distribution, as well as in subject, which have revolutionised the world.
That which was once select and eclectic has now become generalised
and common, and those things which once ranked as among the best
treasures a man could possess, are now sold by the hundredweight as
so much rubbish to be reconstructed and reformed.
When a Pope sent emissaries to beg from a more fortunate holder
a copy of Cicero’s De Oratore,
1
as he might have begged for a costly jewel,
and Bibles were lent and borrowed by churches and monasteries as
friendly housekeepers lend their plate and glass on grand occasions—
when a library of a hundred and fifty volumes was more than a princely
possession, and represented cost, painstaking, and success in search
of a monumental kind—rarity bred an almost superstitious respect,
and books were valued as “things-in-themselves” quite as much as for
what they taught. They were valued even more than gold and silver,
and their bestowal ranked as a good work of extraordinary merit. The
bequest of a book to a religious house ensured eternal salvation and
was paid for by a daily mass in perpetuity for the soul of the pious
donor. The shadow of this splendour was the irrevocable sentence of
damnation pronounced against him who should purloin, conceal, or
even obliterate the title of—say, that Latin translation of Aristotle’s
Physics
2
at Rochester—so great was the store set by the treasure and so
unbounded the veneration for the author. In those pre-printing days
a new book was a phenomenon of more importance than is now the
discovery of a new planet. Cowled scribes copied and recopied the
manuscript, adding illuminated headings and marginal illustrations
of perhaps greater worth than the text, and throwing into their work
a love, an enthusiasm, a singleness of devotion of which even collec-
tors of first editions and unique copies fall short. From these exclusive
literature: then and now
279
1
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC), Roman statesman and scholar. His De Oratore is a
treatise on public speaking.
2
Aristotle (384–322 BC), Greek philosopher.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 279
times, when the man of letters, such as he was, was part priest, part
monarch, having absolute power so far as his realm extended—but
that realm including only the chosen few—up to the present state of
circulating libraries and overflowing publications, we strike the whole
chord of social change and political revolution. What literature was—
thought, morals, and society were. What literature is—these are.
Even in those early days, when literature had its crown of stars, the
man of letters was of the two kinds—the respectable and the
Bohemian. In his quiet cell the cloistered scribe copied and recopied
his favourite manuscripts as the lighter fringes of the religious life to
which he had dedicated himself. In the hall, the bard, who was also a
vassal, celebrated his seigneur’s valiant deeds as part of the service he
owed for protection. Or men of honourable status, like Froissart,
wrote of what they had seen and heard, and took their place by
Herodotus and Tacitus
1
for all time to come. But out of doors the
free-living Troubadours roamed far and wide with jongleurs and glee-
maidens, chanting their lady’s charms to the world outside her bower,
or vaunting the lighter loves which brought no pain and left no
sorrow, and were worn as transiently and lost as gaily as the roses of
Provence—the May-blossom of England. Bedouins of literature—wild
asses of the desert, unbitted and unbridled—this class has ever been
from the first up to now—from the masterless men who wandered
from castle to castle, harping for meat and lodging, onward through
Villon and Savage,
2
and up to the rois de Bohème of Balzac’s time,
3
and
the unkempt, impecunious, irresponsible Geniuses of our own. For
the poet, the singer, is the father and grandfather of the literary tribe.
All literature begins in the rhymed ballad, the rhythmic fable, the allit-
erative saga, the rude dramatic carpentry of the “mystery play,” what-
ever the God to be honoured in the representation. Prose is a later
development; and in prose the spoken oration comes before the
a serious occupation
280
1
Jean Froissart (ca. 1333–1400), French poet and historian; Herodotus (ca. 484–430
BC), Greek historian; Tacitus (ca. 56–120), Roman historian.
2
François Villon (ca. 1431–63), French lyric poet; Richard Savage (ca. 1697–1743),
English poet.
3
“Kings of Bohemia,” or artists and their hangers-on; Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850),
French realist novelist.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 280
written essay. But the poet, the rhymer, the singer, was the ancestor
of the whole grand race; and if on the one side he touched the priest
and the seer, on the other he was but a wild ass of the desert, doing
no good to himself or anyone else.
A whole treatise might be written on the dedications of books.
These, like the books themselves, have undergone transitions which
have changed their original character. In the earliest times they were
the expression not so much of servile fawning as of genuine loyalty.
They were part of the service spoken of above—part of the badge, the
livery, which proclaimed a man’s clanship and vassalage. They were
the transfer into human life of that dedication to the God which
made men offer the first fruits of their flocks and fields to Jehovah,
Zeus, Jove—which made the virgin bride carry her hair to Artemis,
and all who were in dread of sorrow and afraid of dark days seek to
propitiate the Fatal Sisters.
1
This simplicity of intention redeemed the
ofttimes too great abasement of the words. Language was then fuller
of verbal submission than it is now, because the gradations of society
were sharper, and the grip of the higher on the lower was stronger.
The fact of submission was infinitely potent and universal; so that the
seigneur was in very truth a minor kind of god in the sight of heaven,
and a very real one in his dealings with men.
This habit of dedicating books survived the religiousness of the
informing spirit which made it a gift of good things from the inferior to
the superior—a toll paid for love and reverence and gratitude for past
favours and humble trust in favours still to come, without which life
would be but a shipwreck on a desert shore. It survived the honesty and
the reality of the feudal spirit which had inspired them. When, through
Gutenberg and Caxton, literature became more democratic and less
exclusive, the hanger-on had then displaced the vassal, and the patron
was the seigneur in a more modern form. And then the dedications
grow to be servile and fawning and flattering. It was all the difference
between the payment of a duty, willingly paid and counted into the
literature: then and now
281
1
Jehovah, Zeus, and Jove are all names for supreme gods. Artemis was the Greek goddess
of the moon and the hunt; she presided over rituals pertaining to life changes for
women. In classical mythology, the Fatal Sisters are the three goddesses who determine
the length and course of human life.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 281
service, and currying favour from one who could give or withhold at
pleasure. As it ever is, the transition time was bad for all concerned. It
was specially bad for the man of letters, who by degrees sank to the
lowest depths to which he could fall. When private patrons grew scarce,
and the public had not yet discovered it had an intellect which wanted
feeding, the poor author was at the bottom of the social scale. He was
essentially of the class of rogues and vagabonds—the constant inmate
of the debtors’ prison and the sponging-houses—unclean, immoral,
without self-respect or social standing, contemptible and justly despised.
But there have always been the ten just men who have saved the city;
1
and, together with rufflers and roysterers, drunkards and booksellers’
hacks, were men of birth and breeding, of profound scholarship and
absolute independence, whose lives ennobled literature as much as liter-
ature ennobled them. The works of these men redeemed the profession
from the vileness that threatened to destroy it, just as they themselves
redeemed that wretched creature who, like the domestic chaplain, if
admitted to the table of his patron, sat below the salt, left before the
pudding, drank nothing better than small beer, and was perhaps
rewarded for his flattery with an Abigail of damaged virtue for his wife.
So the balance hangs. On the one side we see the self-abasement and
shameful poverty of Grub Street, with some of our best classics written
to pay a gambling debt or a tavern score; on the other, the splendid
achievements of scholars and poets who were men of birth and fortune,
honour and good conduct, loving literature for its own sake, and follow-
ing it as faithfully, as devotedly, as a knight of old served his mistress.
In our own century we have had a period of high honour and fine
feeling when men wrote for money, truly, and made literature a profes-
sion by which their families were to be supported, but when they were
gentlemen and scholars—men who neither sold their conscience nor
prostituted their talents, and who abided steadfastly by their convic-
tions, not counting the cost. Literature was to them a noble calling,
and they felt all its responsibilities. They followed it in the quiet dignity
of home, and they did not stand in the open market touting for
a serious occupation
282
1
Reference to Genesis 18, in which God promises Abraham not to destroy the city of
Sodom if ten righteous men can be found among the wicked.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 282
bidders and buyers. When they came up to London once in three or
four years or so, it was to meet with their peers, look after new books,
pick up old ones, and gather fresh materials for the tale of bricks they
had undertaken to deliver. They did not come to get hold of smart
young reviewers or impressible editors, and so to dip their fingers into
the honey-pot of undeserved praise. There was then no self-advertise-
ment and no organised racket. The work was done, and all pains were
taken in the doing. Then it was left to make its own mark unaided by
the arts which are essential to a showman’s success—and good at
that—but which are as derogatory to the true dignity of literature as
is the advertising quack to the true dignity of medicine. No one then
attempted to “nobble the press”; and they would not have succeeded
if they had. Such men as Southey and Wordsworth
1
—to name no
others—wrote honestly as they thought; the one from books rather
than from cogitation, the other from cogitation rather than from
books; but each with as much pride and dignity as the other; and of
all the men whose names are clustered together like a constellation in
the first half of this century no one touted and no one bribed. Lady
Morgan
2
was perhaps the first author who foreshadowed the purely
modern spirit of self-advertisement and the “flurry,” so dear to pres-
ent writers. Her success was greater than her reputation; for the two
are not identical. Mrs. Gore was the fashionable woman of society
whose drawing-room helped her books; and Moore touched the
golden fringe as much by favour as by merit.
3
But the nobler form of
faithful work, personal modesty, and professional self-respect existed
up to the later half of the present century. And while the new jour-
nalism was the cockatrice still in the egg, that personal modesty and
professional self-respect formed the rule and not the exception. With
the new journalism—all its sensationalism, all its rant, and all its
personality—literature has changed its character; and the virtues of
the past are emphatically the clogs and fetters of the present.
literature: then and now
283
1
Robert Southey (1774–1843) and William Wordsworth (1770–1850), English Romantic
poets and Poet Laureates.
2
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan (1776–1859), Irish novelist.
3
Catherine Gore (1799–1800), English novelist and playwright; Thomas Moore
(1779–1852), Irish poet.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 283
In those days, too, reviewing was a distinct branch of the profession
demanding certain qualifications as absolutely essential;—and it was
done faithfully and without fear or favour. Naturally the reviewer’s own
principles tinged all he wrote, but he wrote according to his
conscience. He might have the narrow mind of a partisan; he had not
the petty spite of a jealous enemy—inimical because jealous. Macaulay
and Croker and Hayward carried on the best traditions of the
reviewer’s office.
1
They clothed in triumphal robes those of whom they
approved. They broke the heads, and sometimes the hearts, of those
whom they opposed. The Edinburgh’s buff and blue was a flag that
heralded a different political verdict from that of the Quarterly’s more
sober-suited livery; but the judges in either case were honest towards
literature so far as prepossession and party politics can leave men
honest; and in neither camp was there the venality, the corruption, the
falsehood, or the close ring of a “mutual admiration” society.
The same manly impartiality of management, subject only to the
private judgment of the reviewer, characterized the old Saturday Review.
If the most formidable, it was also the freest paper of its time. When
John Douglas Cook, and after his death Philip Harwood,
2
held the
helm of that dashing fire-ship, the only indication of any kind given to
a reviewer was, by rare chance, a private note accompanying the books,
saying that, if the work in question could not be conscientiously praised,
the editor preferred not to notice it at all. If it was the first book sent to
this special reviewer of an author who had already been reviewed in the
journal, then the management sent the former notice to prevent a
possible fiasco of contradiction. For the rest, all was left to the judg-
ment, honour, and independence of the reviewer. The person who
should have sought to gain influence with the editor would have had
to eat a mighty peck of the dust of humiliation; and the golden stairs,
or the flowery, sought to have been built, would have been pulled about
a serious occupation
284
1
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859), historian and essayist for the Edinburgh
Review; John Wilson Croker (1780–1857), politician and contributor to the conserva-
tive Quarterly Review; Abraham Hayward (1801–84), man of letters and frequent peri-
odical contributor.
2
John Douglas Cook (1808–68), editor of the Saturday Review from 1855 to 1868;
Philip Harwood (1809–87), an assistant editor under Cook, took over the Review after
Cook’s death.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 284
his ears before he knew where he was. Sharp-tongued and hard-hitting
as the journal was, and by no means sensitive to tender skins, it was
absolutely and proudly independent. No clique owned it; no outsider
was mishandled because an outsider; and its praise or blame flowed
undeflected by any venal influence or base intrigues.
At this present day the work of reviewing has fallen into compara-
tively few hands. A small knot of men hold the success or failure of
many—making or marring reputations according to the word of
command and the rights of affiliation. Of a work lately published, one
man alone wrote sixteen reviews. The author was his friend; and in
sixteen different “vehicles” he carried the flag of his friend’s triumph
and success. He could have blackballed and kept back to the same
extent one who had not paid tribute to the clique, or who was an
outsider against whom it was good fun to heave the traditional brick.
This is the secret of certain suddenly attained literary honours—those
which have been gained by consentaneous acclamation following a
mediocre production, rather than by the steadily rising, gradually
increasing chorus of praise consequent on the repeated output of
good work. Then, if you like, comes an apparently sudden burst, and
the young writer is borne shoulder-high to the front. But this is very
different from the claque which gives sixteen reviews of one work by
the same hand and so ensures at least the temporary success of what
may not be worth the paper it is printed on. These “made” reputa-
tions—made, not earned—have the trick of crumbling to pieces by
use, like Rübezahl’s fairy gold of the evening passing into withered
leaves in the morning—or the Algonquin rabbit’s bower of refuge
and delight, showing nothing but sticks and straws and thorns and
brushwood when the glamour passed.
1
One of the odd things of the present time is the incompetency of
those who write for the instruction of others. To say that half the novel-
writers, for instance, do not know their own language, and are often
literature: then and now
285
1
In German folklore, Rubezahl is a gnome who tries to win a princess; when she deserts
him, he destroys the magic palace and riches he has created from the air for her. In
Algonquin folklore, the lazy rabbit Ableegumooch thinks other animals have an easier
time gathering food; when he tries to imitate them, he finds that only his own ways work
for him.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 285
deficient in even elemental grammar, is to say what every one who
reads can see for himself. To say, too, that critics have more words than
matter is again a thing too patent to be denied. When a really deep
and learned book appears, there are but three or four men in the king-
dom capable of reviewing it. The rank and file try their hands at it and
jump on it with hobnailed boots, pounding at the outside but not
touching the kernel. Being beyond them, they fall foul of it as obscure
or unintelligible. The rasher kind fling their boomerang at a matter
of fact of which they think they can judge as well as the “fuzzy-wuzzy”
of the tropics can judge of the ice and snow of the Arctic regions. But
the boomerang justifies its lines and comes back on the head of him
who cast it so gaily into the void; and the would-be smiter is sorely smit-
ten, to the vindication of the law of reprisals. Sometimes a book is
beyond even the leaders of literature and has to be let alone—no man
found able to bend that bow. I believe I am right in saying this was the
case with Sir Richard Burton’s Book of the Sword.
1
This extraordinary
work has remained practically unreviewed to this day; no man on the
press having the varied information necessary for a competent criti-
cism of such a strange mass of learning, and editors having the wisdom
to set aside a marvel which might prove a snare and a trap.
It takes, however, knowledge to understand one’s own ignorance.
With that knowledge one can avoid those pitfalls which are sometimes
dug for the rash and unwary—those lines of impossible Latin and
non-existing Greek, for example, over which more than one somer-
sault has been made—head and heels coming to the ground
together—while the cruel joker stood by laughing in his sleeve as the
wig fell off and the stuffing came out.
If the editor of to-day is not always the well-read scholar his prede-
cessors mostly were, the young lions who roar in his columns and
pages are even less well equipped with what used to be considered
necessary literary plenishing. The smart young men who know their
way about, who have seen more than they have read and observed
more than they have thought or felt—look on the old-time erudition,
a serious occupation
286
1
Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821–90), explorer and linguist. His Book of the Sword
(1884) tells the story of swords and swordplay from prehistory to Roman times; because
of poor sales, further volumes were never published.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 286
with all its classical impedimenta and dusty mediaeval scholasticism,
as so much rubbish to be flung-into the waste-paper basket. What has
the Lydian lyre or the Phrygian flute
1
to do with a rattling article on
the modern music-hall? Who cares for the Doctors, “cherubic,”
“angelic,” or otherwise, who has to review a sporting novel? Like to
like, if it is not always that like cures like. As the literature, so the
reviewer; and a mighty poor dish is made of it between them; for
perhaps there was never a time in literature when there was less
education among the literati than at present. Contrast this smart
young man, with his flow of words and wallet-full of superficial facts,
with a steady-going ordinarily educated man of middle age who was
nourished on the classics of such languages as he knows. He can put
his finger on the source of almost all the allusions and quotations he
meets with, while the smart young man is hopelessly abroad. Dante
and Tasso and Ariosto
2
are household words to the one—to the other
names without point or meaning. Montaigne and Rochefoucauld,
Voltaire and Rousseau, Racine and Corneille
3
the one, too, knows
from end to end; but the other knows no more of them than he
knows of Kant or Fichte, Goethe or Schiller.
4
He can reel you off a
dozen Bab Ballads; he knows by heart the “Heathen Chinee” and
“Jem Bludso”;
5
he could pass an examination in Mark Twain and Ally
Sloper.
6
So be it. Being of the time he must understand the condi-
tions of the time and catch the froth as it rises. But it would not hurt
him to know something more than he does, and so be able to dip his
cup deeper than the froth—coming down to the purer springs where
literature: then and now
287
1
Lydian and Phrygian are two of the classical Greek musical scales.
2
Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Turquato Tasso (1544–95), and Ludivico Ariosto
(1474–1533), Italian poets.
3
Michel de Montaigne (1533–92), François, Duke de Rochefoucauld (1613–80),
Voltaire (pen name of François Marie Arouet, 1694–1778), Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(1712–78), French philosophers; Jean Racine (1639–99), French playwright.
4
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), German
philosophers; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Friedrich Schiller
(1759–1805), German poets.
5
The Bab Ballads are a series of comic poems written by W.S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and
published in Fun magazine from 1861 to 1905; “The Heathen Chinee” (1870) is a
comic poem by American writer Bret Harte (1836–1902); “Jim Bludso of the Prairie
Belle” is a comic dialect poem by American poet John Hay (1838–1905).
6
Ally Sloper’s Half-Holiday (1884–1916) was an extremely popular Victorian comic paper.
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 287
the thoughts of great men mix and mingle, and enrich the mind as
nothing else can.
But, indeed, our literature is too entirely frothy at the present day.
Nothing more superficial has yet appeared. We can read nothing that
takes time or trouble. Our science is got by reviews, and even these
have lately been boiled down to their bare bones. Expansion, illus-
tration, exhaustive treatment generally, perfectness of arrangement,
beauty of style—all have gone by the board in favour of a terseness
which reduces literature to so many pages of algebraic signs or rows
of hieroglyphics. The telegraph has destroyed letter writing; the
condensation of the shorter reviews is ruining literature. Richardson’s
nine volumes
1
have given place to the wide-spaced “shilling shocker.”
A learned work which occupies a lifetime—say Spedding’s Bacon
2
—
is like an aerolite in a field of cheap bricks, wondered at and admired,
but of no general use. The fine and sufficing reviews of the Edinburgh
and Quarterly are caviare to the general, if still a handful of the faith-
ful appreciate them; while the glib skimmings of the clever handy-
man are taken as the gist of the matter, and nothing that he has left
out is considered worth insertion. We get our science chiefly by these
superficial skimmings, and even these are re-skimmed for the bene-
fit of those who live fast and have no time for real thought or solid
learning. A few catchwords get adopted, and those who know
absolutely nothing of the source or the original context, pick up the
current phrases and apply them with liberality. This generalized adop-
tion simply turns those pregnant phrases into cant and a kind of
respectable burgomaster slang. These phrases break out suddenly,
thick and “rash,” as mushrooms on a dewy morning, and they are
flung about so profusely that you weary of their very echo. I well
remember the genesis of certain expressions like “the line of least
resistance,” “ the survival of the fittest,” “environment,” “differentia-
tion,” “atavism,” “ heredity,” “natural selection,” &c., and how the
words caught on and were adopted by writers who knew no more
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288
1
Samuel Richardson (1689–1761), English novelist; his novels typically ran to multiple
volumes.
2
James Spedding (1808–81) collected and edited all of Francis Bacon’s (1561–1626)
works and issued them in new editions from 1857 to 1874.
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about their birthplaces than the Egyptian fellah knows about the
sources of the Nile. But they give a certain colour of erudition to the
page where they appear; and colour goes a long way.
If some of the young lions on the press have suspiciously long ears,
and if their roar is apt to degenerate into the familiar bray when deal-
ing with things demanding thought and general culture, they are
emphatically “all there” when put to the handling of matters congen-
ial to the tastes of modern society. Their descriptions of functions, with
the catalogue of guests and the kind of dresses worn by the ladies, leave
nothing to be desired. They might boggle over Dante and find
Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy
1
a tough morsel, but they are at home
when they note who talks to whom, and whether “crushed strawberry”
or “dead roseleaves” become the Beauty best. Also, they are great in
interviews, where also they are more than a trifle offensive. Say that
you decline to be interviewed on any subject whatever for a certain
paper, but, because touched by a certain bit of cheap sentiment about
his mother, you receive privately as a simple gentleman the man who
wanted to draw you out on politics, religion, morals, and give to the
world in the columns of penny paper the result of a life’s difficulties
and struggles. Your young interviewer comes, on the distinct under-
standing that there is to be no record of your conversation, and that
he is received as a gentleman only. He keeps to the letter of the agree-
ment, but he earns his Judas-pence by a coarse attack on your general
manners and being, which he makes spicy by accusations of petty sins
entirely foreign to your temperament and nature. He, too, is of the
time—the time which, in literature at all events, has forgotten the old
traditions of good faith and high breeding, and which rakes up its
Judas-pence
2
by any act of treachery within its reach.
Another young lion of the time bursts into your room unannounced,
unknown, uninvited. He comes on a self-appointed mission, seeking to
entangle you in your talk concerning A. or B., that he may fasten on
you materials for an action of libel. He works round his subject like a
literature: then and now
289
1
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) is a philosophical work by English writer Robert
Burton (1577–1640).
2
Reference to the Old Testament, in which the disciple Judas betrays Jesus to the legal
authorities for a reward of 30 pieces of silver.
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questing hound, his nose to the ground, sniffing the scent. He seeks to
entrap you into an admission, to trip you up over an assertion, to make
you blurt out the truth as contradiction to his lie. You have to be alert
and alive, else, before you know your whereabouts, your unknown inter-
viewer will have nailed you to a confession which will cost you more
than you care to pay. That also comes into the code of honour of the
present day. So, too, it comes into the idea of fitness and general
harmony that you should be asked to submit yourself to the inquisito-
rial acumen of a girl young enough to be your granddaughter. The
editor of such-and-such a paper writes to you requesting you to see a
young lady, whom you knew when you were of middle age and she was
a golden-haired child, and to answer her on such topics as she shall see
fit to broach. The girl is a good girl, a clever girl, a pretty girl, and one
whose literary career you would willingly help. But a certain feeling of
self-respect and dignity, as well as regard for that general fitness of
things, makes you decline. You have drunk deep of the waters of life,
bitter and sweet; you have known love and sorrow and loss, difficulties
of fortune and difficulties of faith; you have stood by the grave of your
dead illusions and watched the last flicker of your futile love; you have
touched every note of the chord and trodden the wine-press emphati-
cally alone; and then you are asked to bare your soul, scarred and
seamed and tear-stained as it is with sorrow and experience, to the gaze
of a fresh young maid just entering life, who is to question you on such
topics as she shall see fitting. Fancy any of the self-respecting men of
the past generation receiving such a proposition! Fancy Walter Savage
Landor on the gridiron of the interviewer, or Walter Scott, or Robert
Southey, or Wordsworth, or even Coleridge,
1
though he was less reti-
cent than those others! But even Coleridge would have chosen his inter-
preter according to his own dignity, and the smart young man, as well
as the fresh young maid, would not have been in it.
It may be said that some slight line of relation exists between the
modern interviewer and Boswell;
2
and that the jaunty presumption of
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290
1
Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834),
English poets. Linton was a great admirer and protegé of Landor.
2
James Boswell (1740–95), Scottish writer best known for his biography and memoirs of
English writer and lexicographer Samuel Johnson (1709–84).
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the former finds its Prototype in the foolishness of the latter. But the
line is very slight—the relation very wide. The modern interviewer
stands as far below Boswell in comprehension of his subject, and in
the faculty of making his readers comprehend it too, as the modern
littérateur stands below Johnson himself in depth of thought and width
of learning. Boswell might have been the germ, the embryo of the later
development; but Lord! as he would have said, that later development
has wandered wonderfully far from its original sketch! The full-grown
creature is as unlike its embryo as the flower is unlike the seed.
All the same, the modern interviewer fits in exactly with the
modern man, whether of action or of letters. Barnum’s advice to all
who have anything to sell has been taken to heart by our modern
literati, and the art of self-advertisement is carried to the highest point
of perfection.
1
In the days when literature respected itself and men
of letters had their own “pundonor”
2
which they cherished, no man
would have sent his book unsolicited to an influential stranger, or
would have fished with a long line for subscribers. The presentation
copy to a friend, or a brother worker even if unknown, was another
matter. But to tout for a favourable notice, or indeed for any notice
at all, was as impossible to the self-respecting littérateur as to tout for
subscribers. Authors do both nowadays. They send you printed forms
of subscription to fill up, for books perhaps as yet unwritten and in
any case unpublished—books of the merits of which you have no
means of forming the faintest opinion, but which you are expected
to buy on trust. You are not necessarily a fellow-worker. If you were,
the thing would not be so glaring, though even here, from a total
stranger by no means in the forefront of the profession, the applica-
tion is an impertinence. But those who try to get subscribers by this
method do not confine themselves to their own craft. They sweep the
seas with a net as wide as that of a hospital, an institution, a philan-
thropist, a money-lender. Catch or miss, it is an advertisement; and
Barnum’s advice was wise. It is part of the modern spirit of blare and
bustle. No one is content to do good work quietly, trusting to the
literature: then and now
291
1
P.T. Barnum (1810–91), American entrepreneur and showman, reputed to have said
“There’s a sucker born every minute.”
2
Self-respect; self-esteem.
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intrinsic merits of what he sends out, and disdaining the patter of the
cheapjack as the showier arts of Dr. Dulcamara.
1
Every one must have
his share of the drums and fifes which wake up the street; and the
once proud and dignified Muse, who, like a second Egeria,
2
kept
herself concealed while her work prospered and did good, now jigs
along the highway like a hallelujah lass, shouting her loudest and
dancing her lustiest. It may be all right. Perhaps in view of the close
ring of reviewers, it is only another form of self-protection. Whether
right or wrong, it is open to onlookers to pronounce the form ugly
and the method hateful; and one need not be a fossil to regret the
past days of quietness, reserve, and dignity.
Nothing can exceed the ingenuity in self-advertisement of the time,
unless it be the ingenuity in ill-nature of attacks. An action for libel,
carrying a farthing damages, is a splendid advertisement for a man
whose work, left to itself and not floated by friendly gas, would sink
like a stone to the bottom. A mare’s-nest
3
found in the compound of
a man of mark sells that issue clean off and the second edition after
it. It “matters not a cherry stone” that the mare’s-nest has to be demol-
ished next day, and all the foals hatching in the eggs among the sticks
and straws have to pass away in smoke. It answered its purpose while
it lasted, and the proprietor of the journal reaped the benefit—which
was all that was wanted. For, indeed, other flags beside dignity have
died out of modern literature—truth and fairness among the rest.
Our prize-fights might have been brutal; no one says they were not.
But they were conducted according to their own laws, and a blow
below the belt was “foul.” Perhaps this was better than the indiscrim-
inate hard hitting of the present day, when no rules are observed, and
the fouler the blow the more it tells in the scrimmage; when a well-
concocted lie, which looks so like the truth that it can never be quite
sworn away, is held to be a legitimate weapon of attack; when the
grossest betrayal of confidence, the meanest treachery in return for
hospitality, is only one draggled feather the more in the battered cap
a serious occupation
292
1
Quack doctor who sells patent medicine in an 1866 burlesque by W.S. Gilbert.
2
Egeria or Aetheria (ca. 380s) wrote about her pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the customs
and religious practices she observed.
3
Hoax or delusion; in this context, a false report or accusation.
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of the literary mercenary. “Grub Street” and the “penny-a-liner” have
been words of contempt universally accepted. We want a phrase, terse,
inclusive, descriptive, which shall express the nature of the literary
mercenary—the man who hires out his brains no matter to which side
or what cause—who will assassinate an honourable reputation as soon
as he will expose a pretender—find a mare’s-nest as soon as scotch a
snake; the man who has no law save that of making his journal sell—
for whom the Ten Commandments are as obsolete as the Broad Stone
of Honour—and to whom the debâcle to come, if his political princi-
ples ever take shape in parliamentary enactments, is on all fours with
that famous, “Apres moi le déluge.”
1
When truth and honour, self-respect and sincerity have gone out
of a profession, its life has gone. It has become then the “purry pome”
of chivalry, and the sooner it is buried the better. From the dead self
something better will spring up.
The democratic wave which has spread over all society—and
washed down some things which had better have been left standing—
has swept through the whole province of literature. The spread of
education among the people demands literature cheap enough to at
once suit their pockets and meet their wants. This naturally increases
the output; and the output necessitates more hands. Among the
hundreds who write where formerly was one, there must of necessity
be a larger percentage of the incompetent. So we find it; and so every
editor and every publisher and every author of any name at all prove
it. The cartloads of absolute rubbish which are shot into the publish-
ers’ offices and laid on the tables of editors have their screenings and
filterings in the private houses of authors. People who have nothing
to say and who could not say it if they had, dance down the flowers of
rhetoric and upset all the orderly arrangements of syntax—then send
you the result. There is not a grammatical error, short of “they was,”
and “he were,” that they do not commit. Their composition is as dislo-
cated as a creature that has been broken alive on the wheel. All their
carts go before all their horses and their prepositions are tin-tacked
on to the wrong verbs. Their sentences are so many cats’-cradles
literature: then and now
293
1
“After me, disaster”; attributed to French king Louis XV (1710–74).
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where you seek in vain for the governing line—the guiding clue.
Their epithets are simply repetitions one of the other—sticky drops
of the same material agglutinated, and as void of suggestiveness as of
beauty. There is not an original thought in the whole twenty pages of
closely written manuscript—foolscap—and not a line of description
drawn at first hand. They reproduce what they have read and warm
up the stale dish into a still more unpalatable hash. The trashiest
magazine, the most ignorant paper published, declines their work.
The fence to be cleared with either is very low, very easy; but these
halting aspirants have not been able to do even that.
Then they throw themselves on the mercy of some entire stranger,
whom they know only by name, and beg for perusal, correction, sift-
ing, and influence with some editor to get the one or two that he may
choose out of the half-score sent him for his verdict accepted,
published, and paid for. Their letters are as piteous as cries. You see
and know the hard struggle that it all is, and you would, if you could,
help them—but not to still further vitiate the public taste, and still
more deeply degrade one of the noblest professions that man has
made, by letting loose on the public the futile stuff they call their
“work.” Inadequate all through, you would rather pay for its suppres-
sion than help in its publication; but if you return it, declining to do
anything to get it floated and deprecating further efforts, you are sure
to be set down as jealous, grasping, obstructive, and without the feel-
ing of comradeship. If you write with gingerly caution and intentional
tenderness for possible sore places, you leave the door open for
another inrush; and, time being valuable and eyesight precious, you
have in all probability given yourself away. As an appalling amount of
trash is printed, you cannot wonder nor condemn when these feeble
folk say fatuously, “Why not we as well as others?” Judged by their own
standard—always a flattering one—their work is not worse than what
they have read, and maybe is better than some. And the money is so
much wanted—which makes the whole sad tragedy! For all that, no
one who respects his profession would help in the publication of trash
which shows nothing, inspires nothing, teaches nothing, suggests
nothing—which is just stale material very badly mixed and served.
These impossible manuscripts are for the most part grotesque
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294
Serious Occupation  1/13/03  11:06 AM  Page 294
attempts at sensationalism or vapid sentimentalism. Sometimes they
are essays of the cat’s-cradle sort, where you look in vain for a central
point or a leading line, and where there is neither orderly sequence
of idea nor the sense of proportion.
Of all forms of fiction the sensational demands the most careful treat-
ment. There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and to
the sublime may be added the horrible, the eerie, the bloodcurdling,
the sensational. That step is no wider than the bridge, itself no thicker
than a hair, over which the True Believer passes on his way to heaven,
with the pit yawning below. And just as many a peccant soul trips, stum-
bles, and falls, so do the sensational writers pass over the narrow line and
plunge headlong into bathos. It becomes a trick as mechanical as the
pea and the thimble, and is no longer a weird vision filling the imagi-
nation unbidden. It is pumped up; it does not flow naturally. It is a ghost
made out of a turnip and a white sheet thrown about a hop-pole; it is
not the silent spectre stealing between you and the moonlight—the
formless Horror that, like another Gorgon’s head, turns your very heart
to stone. Murder and mystery and the wild phantasies of that region
which is neither earth nor sky; tales of those peoples where the men are
magicians and the women are superhuman in insight and understand-
ing; crimes which have no name and sorrows which have no human
source; the annals of Scotland Yard and the experiences of Bedlam, have
all been ransacked and exhausted, and nothing is now left for the later
hands but the barren gleaning of well-harvested fields and the jags and
rags of worn-out garments. Sensationalism is played out, and the
“shilling shocker” has run its course. But among all this chaff and
rubbish we every now and then light on a bit of real gold—as in that
wonderful piece of work, A Village Tragedy
1
—one of the strongest as well
as one of the most subtle stories of these later days. For the most part,
however, our fiction is not “epoch-making”; and the mantles of Scott,
Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot still flutter above our heads, cover-
ing no man’s shoulders. Some younger writers are forging ahead, and
one in especial has found his way to the front—heartily welcome for the
power and originality that he shows.
literature: then and now
295
1
Novel (1887) by English novelist Margaret L. Woods (1856–1945).
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If we are not up to the highest mark in fiction, neither are we in one
class of poems. We have idyls and dramas, and splendid concerted
pieces like grand orchestral music, but we have no now songs which
stir the nation’s heart. Our music-hall songs, like our drawing-room
ditties, are beneath contempt, and need not be spoken of. What we
want are strong, stirring, wholesome songs, such as Dibdin wrote—
songs which go down to the very roots of patriotism, and help, even
more than set orations, to keep men faithful to law and country.
1
In
this day of universal disintegration and the supremacy of fads, there
are so many who would sacrifice the good of the country—the integrity
of the empire—to some impracticable theory that looks like godly
justice on paper and would be cruel wrong in practice. And we want
“keying- up” again to the one central duty—the one passionate devo-
tion—the patriotic love of Englishmen for England. Let them sneer
as they will, these milk-and-water faddists, at the Jingo sentiment. The
Jingo song was a godsend, and struck the right chord boldly and truly.
We want more of the same character if on another topic. The times
are ripe, the work is waiting to be done, and a new Dibdin would be
of priceless value. This, too, would be a return of the Now to the Then,
and one which would do more public good than even the fitting of
Scott’s mantle or the gift of Thackeray’s. The songs of a nation both
show more and sink deeper than would seem at first sight. The minds
which appreciated “Drink to me only with thine eyes,” and “Bid me to
live and I will live,”
2
were of a different cast and mould in all concern-
ing love than are those which find pleasure in luscious insipidity or
sensual vulgarity. Dibdin’s songs roused quite different feelings from
those which are touched by “Tommy make Room for your Uncle,” or
“A Pair of Lovely Black Eyes”;
3
and the fact that patriotic songs are
seemingly dead and done with is in itself a revelation of public feeling.
All that used to be patriotism seems to have gone into a slashing kind
of religiosity, where Heaven replaces the country and the devil swallows
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296
1
Charles Dibdin (1745–1814), English songwriter who specialized in patriotic and senti-
mental songs.
2
First lines from songs by English poets Ben Jonson (1572–1634) and Robert Herrick
(1591–1674).
3
Popular songs of the 1870s.
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up all the other enemies. The effect of these songs and hymns on the
congregations is a measure of what might be done by a little manly
vigour and working patriotism.
In every direction we come to the same patent fact—the need of
reorganisation in literature. There are too many writers because some
of them are so ineffably weak and bad. There is too little good work of
real sound scholarship, and too much worthless froth—bright,
sparkling, iridescent, what you will—but only froth when all is said that
can be said of it. Writers themselves have lost their old self-respecting
quiet dignity. They are no longer the representatives of the grand old
philosophers, thinking before they spoke and learning before they
taught; the majority of them are mere market hucksters selling their
wares to the highest bidder—cheapjacks advertising themselves by
patter and clatter—members of a ring which bolsters up those who are
affiliated and boycotts those who are not, irrespective of the worth of
the work done. With the creation of the interviewer, reticence on the
one side is destroyed—on the other, honour goes by the board. What
is not given in one form is filched in another; and he who refuses to
be “drawn” is thrawed independently, and has to submit to his fate will-
ing or unwilling. The public does not read unless it can run as it reads.
A book is boiled down to a review, and the review is condensed into a
newspaper article. Three lines of small print discuss and dismiss a work
that is the outcome of a life’s study, and those three lines are written
by a man who does not know the very alphabet of the subject. Save in
one or two noteworthy exceptions, where the editor, himself a scholar,
knows how to choose his contributors, young lions are fatuously cred-
ited with literary, scientific, political, and artistic omniscience; and the
general utility man, who knows absolutely nothing from the root-work,
weaves the crowns or lays on the lash as the fancy takes him, or as he
is the friend of the author’s, or the reverse.
Compare one of these smart young men with the erudite scholars
of the past generation—the men whose work was as close and perfect
as a bit of Japanese enamel—who have chapter and verse for every
assertion, and could put their fingers on references and quotations
of which our modern young lion knows about as much as he does of
Chinese—and then measure the distance of the downward step that
literature: then and now
297
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literature has made. What was once solid heart-of-oak is now the flim-
siest veneer. What was once mastery of the whole subject is now a
quick study, a book of well-chosen extracts, and a serviceable memory
when called on. That which was once a grave and honourable profes-
sion has now degenerated into a noisy, pushing, self-advertising trade;
and he who would teach is not always abreast of those whom he
undertakes to instruct. The classics are discarded for personal gossip;
the continuity to be found in history runs into the sand out of which
a new political fad is built; the human nature which has never varied
in essence from the earliest times up to now is glibly supposed to be
undergoing a transformation which will enable men to stand on their
heads and talk with their heels; the golden apple has become the
“purry pome,” and the democratic wave has covered the garden of
the Hesperides with mud and slime. Literature is not the honourable
profession it was when practised by the learned gentlemen and schol-
ars of the past generation, and it does not confer the same dignity—
because the standard of self-respect has fallen like the standard of
qualifications—because Dulcamara has displaced Bacon, and Dr.
Marigold
1
is the best representative of a philosopher the rank and file
of modern literature can show.
SOURCE
Fortnightly Review 47 (1 April 1890).
SELECTED SECONDARY READING
Anderson, Nancy Fix. Woman Against Women in Victorian England: A
Life of Eliza Lynn Linton. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1987.
Broomfield, Andrea. “Much More than an Antifeminist: Eliza Lynn
Linton’s Contribution to the Rise of Victorian Popular
Journalism.” Victorian Literature and Culture 29.2 (2001): 267–83.
Van Thal, Herbert. Eliza Lynn Linton: The Girl of the Period. London:
Allen and Unwin, 1979.
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298
1
Character in an 1865 short story by Dickens.
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alice thompson (1847–1926) was born in Barnes,
Surrey. Her father was a Cambridge graduate of independent
means and a friend of Charles Dickens, and her mother was
a concert pianist. Alice and her sister Elizabeth, who later
became an artist, were raised primarily in Europe, where their
father supervised their education. By the time the family
returned to England in 1864, Alice was fluent in French and
Italian and had already revealed a talent for poetry. The
family converted to Roman Catholicism during the 1870s.
Encouraged by the poets Aubrey de Vere and Alfred
Tennyson, Alice published her first volume of poetry, Preludes,
in 1875. One of the early admirers of her work was the jour-
nalist Wilfred Meynell, whom she married in 1877. Their
marriage was a happy and highly collaborative partnership.
Besides raising seven children, the Meynells jointly edited a
number of periodicals, including the Catholic Weekly Register
(1881–98) and the literary magazines The Pen (1880) and
Merry England (1883–95). Alice wrote numerous essays on
literature and the arts for each of these publications. In addi-
tion, she contributed essays to the Scots (later National)
Observer and the Dublin Review, and from 1894 on she
published weekly articles in the Pall Mall Gazette. Her National
Observer and Pall Mall Gazette essays were later republished as
The Rhythm of Life (1893) and The Colour of Life (1896). In
recognition both of her own work and of her efforts to raise
299
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
(FEBRUARY 1895)
Alice Meynell
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the professional standing of women of letters, in 1896 she was
elected president of the Women’s Society of Journalists.
From the 1890s on, Meynell returned to poetry, publish-
ing a number of volumes, including Other Poems (1896), Later
Poems (1902), and A Father of Women and Other Poems (1917).
The reception of her poetry was such that she was a serious
candidate for the post of Poet Laureate in 1895. In 1901 and
1902, she undertook a lecture tour of the United States, and
in 1914 she was elected to the Academic Committee of the
Royal Society of Literature. Her Last Poems (1923) was
published posthumously.
Meynell’s essay on “Christina Rossetti” appeared in the New
Review a couple of months after Rossetti’s death. Written in
Meynell’s characteristic compressed prose style, the essay
examines seriously the strengths and deficiencies of Rossetti’s
work, especially the charge that her versification was faulty.
Beginning with the warning that “Poetry is the rarest thing in
the world”—and that even “fine poets” have only “rare great
moments”—Meynell admits that “We are not to reverence the
versification of Christina Rossetti as we have learnt to rever-
ence that of a great and classic master.” But although
Rossetti’s poetry evinces a “characteristic carelessness” and
the occasional flat line, what matters is that it remains “purely
poetic” because “It proves art present, and present essen-
tially.” Taking as an example the poem “Convent Threshold,”
Meynell argues that while it may fail to meet technical ideals
of imagery, grace, and music, it remains an “immortal song
of love and ... cry of more than earthly fear.” In the end,
Meynell insists, Rossetti will be remembered for doing “a very
serious service to English versification by using afresh this
voice of poetry—the voice that sings in musical time.”
there is assuredly but one opinion as to the poet who
has lately passed from earth, though that opinion varies in degree. All
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who have human hearts confess her to be a sad and a sweet poet, all
who have a sense of poetry know how rare was the quality of poetry
in her—how spiritual and how sensuous—somewhat thin, somewhat
dispread in her laxer writing, but perfectly strong, perfectly impas-
sioned in her best. To the name of poet her right is so sure that proof
of it is to be found everywhere in her “unconsidered ways,” and always
irrefutably. How does this poet or that approach the best beauties of
his poem? From the side of poetry, or from the side of commonplace?
Christina Rossetti always drew near from the side of poetry: from what
to us, who are not altogether poets, is the further side. She came from
beyond those hills. She is not often on the heights, but all her access
is by poetry. Of few indeed is this so true.
Poetry is the rarest thing in the world. Moreover, being rare, it has
its own rarities, which are to the poem what the poem is to “custom-
ary life’s exceeding injocundity.” We do no wrong to a fine poet in
speaking of his rare great moments. His manner of approaching
these—his direction—gives us the pleasure of giving him a long
welcome. It is the daily life of his muse. Even poets who are not great
have had fine moments: approaching them, doubtless, through
commonplace, but certainly reaching them. And approach is so
important, so significant of origin, so marked with character, so
charged with memories, so full of preparation, so indicative of
sequestered life, that one might well consider it the history of all that
lives and grows. It is, in short, life with direction. And, even if so to
consider it be to yield to some temptation to digress, let a few words,
to set it forth, be excused here. Approach is fit to dwell upon, and has
leisure, and no beaten or definite pathways. It is the day by day, the
waking and sleeping, the temper and the nature. In love it is all the
justification, for without a whole approach, love is profanity. In poetry
approach is as perceptible as the quarter of the wind. Whence comes
this flight of song? Over soft seas or dry lands? Either flight crowns
the same heights. See, too, how much is approach in the art of archi-
tecture. A great building may be held to be as it were organic beyond
its apparent boundaries, and to have the land, the city, the street, for
its approaches; for its accessories the climate and the cloud. And it is
worth while to note that a people which has lost almost all besides in
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the building of its towns, has still the sense of access. Its architects of
the Renaissance turned that sense too consciously to artifice. They
were too much aware of their own instinct. They took too large and
too deliberate, too courtly, a gesture. They swept too far, and trusted
so little to the felicity whereby a great church makes itself a centre—
somewhat as the sunset disposes the clouds radiant from a centre in
its brows—that they seem now and then to work against the natural
good luck and to convince you of over-much purpose. Bernini
1
knew
too well that he had the sense of distance, and by taking thought he
added many a rood to the outposts of St. Peter’s; and you wonder that
the sky does not close with his design.
In poetry approach is, needless to say, far more subtle. It is the unap-
parent history of a poem. Some poets let us see but little of it. Others
permit us to trace their way to their successes, and we sometimes see that
they have trudged a common or a difficult path, and one that has known
our own feet and our friends’. Christina Rossetti allows us to see how
purely poetic was all her least success and her unsuccess. We willingly
linger in an easy world which is, with her, not only easy but perpetually
beautiful. No less easy was her supreme success: for it is impossible to
think that she did herself any violence by close work upon her art. All
she touches is fine poetic material, albeit material that is often some-
what scattered. She has no unhandsome secrets of composition, or diffi-
culties of attainment. She keeps the intimate court of a queen. The
country of poetry is her home, and she is a “manifest housekeeper ,” and
does nothing out of it. As for the stanzas and passages—but they are
oftener whole brief lyrics—in which she reaches the point of poetic
passion, they have the stress of purpose which, when it knows how to
declare itself, is art indeed. The moment of poetic passion solves all
doubts as to art. Not that it can possibly take the place of art or make
amends for art absent, as some strange criticism would have us think. It
proves art present, and present essentially. Not a verse that manifests the
life with which it was written can be a verse of less than triumphant art.
When we are judging the work of any poet under the rank of absolute
greatness, we can hardly do otherwise than judge the technique with a
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1
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), Italian architect and artist.
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more or less separate judgment. It may be a paradox to some readers,
nevertheless it seems to be a great truth: that the more splendid the
poetry the more august in importance is what, with lesser work, would
be called the “mere form.” It rises to such dignity that in the highest
poetry the verse, the versification, is the very Muse. But fine poetry of
a lower rank is to be judged in parts; and what I claim for it here is that
some little failure, or fault, of mere technique by no means prevents or
bars the art of a true expression. We are not to reverence the versifica-
tion of Christina Rossetti as we have learnt to reverence that of a great
and classic master. She proves herself an artist, a possessor of the
weighty matters of the law of art, despite the characteristic carelessness
with which she played by ear. That thought so moving, feeling so
urgent, as the thought and feeling of her “Convent Threshold” are
communicated, are uttered alive, proves her an artist. This is to be
insisted upon, because during her life it was said with hesitation, by a
critic of evident authority, “At its best her work is almost art”:
1
so
conspicuous had the obvious and as it were external faults seemed to
him. To hazard another paradox: technique is not all external. In this
poem—it is impossible not to dwell on such a masterpiece—without
imagery; without beauty except that which is inevitable (and what
beauty is more costly?); without grace, except the invincible grace of
impassioned poetry; without music, except the ultimate music of the
communicating word, she utters that immortal song of love and that
cry of more than earthly fear: a song of penitence for love that yet
praises love more fervently than would a chorus hymeneal:
To-day, while it is called to-day,
Kneel, wrestle, knock, do violence, pray.
…
I turn from you my cheeks and eyes,
My hair which you shall see no more.
Alas for joy that went before!
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1
This comment is attributed to Tennyson in an 1862 letter from the critic Francis Turner
Palgrave (1824–97) to Christina’s brother, the editor William Michael Rossetti
(1829–1919).
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My words were slow, my tears were few,
But through the dark my silence broke.
In “Amor Mundi,” also, there is terror, though it be terror that is
not instant, but that flies and sings, as ominous as a bird of warning—
terror suggested, not suffered, as it is profoundly suffered in “The
Convent Threshold.” In “The Three Enemies,” again, fear is uttered,
not sharply but, with a constant sense of
The sadness of all sin
When look at in the light of love.
And, by-the-bye, while the lax ways of Christina Rossetti’s versification
are matters of frequent criticism, the artistic perfection of these twelve
stanzas of “The Three Enemies” should be insisted on. Equally perfect
are “Uphill,” “Advent,” and some ten more: all pieces written with the
full number of syllables. She has here a strong and gentle brevity with-
out haste, a beauty of phrasing, a finality, a sense of structure and
stability, with the freedom of life, scarce possible to surpass. Wherever
she writes by rule, she uses that rule admirably well. It is only in the
lax metres which keep—more or less—musical time rather than
account of numbers, that one might wish she had more theory. Her
versification then is apt to be ambiguous and even incorrect. Take the
beautiful lyric at the end of The Prince’s Progress, though many other
passages might be cited. It seems, in one stanza, that the poet has
chosen to let the beats of her time fall—punctually and with full meas-
ure of time—now upon a syllable and now upon a rest within the line;
so that the metre goes finely to time, like a nursery song for the rock-
ing of a cradle. But then the succeeding stanza is, as often as not, writ-
ten with no rule except that of numbers and accents. One stanza
throws doubt upon the others. Read the poem which way you will,
there is no assurance as to the number of beats which she intended.
It may be answered that ambiguity is difficult to avoid in a language
which interchanges accent and quantity, and has few syllables which
may not be used as long or short according to a writer’s will; and that
there is not much to hinder any man from reading Michael
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Drayton’s
1
“Agincourt” or his “Trent” as laxly dactyllic poems (one
must, for convenience, take Coleridge’s permission to use such
words, made for quantitative verse, to describe the mixed verse of
English poetry):
Fair stood the wind for France.
This is a line of four beats, and makes fine “march-music.” But it may
be read with two. If Drayton cannot help ambiguity, it is the fault of
the language. This is true. But at least his ambiguity is just so much
as is inevitable. He gives you the alternative throughout this “Ballad
of Agincourt.”
Now, even if Christina Rossetti has more than the inevitable ambi-
guity, and really mingles her measures, she has done a very serious
service to English versification by using afresh this voice of poetry—
the voice that sings in musical time. It had been much neglected since
Coleridge,
2
and he used it so seldom! That is, he used redundant sylla-
bles freely, but a rest within the line most rarely:
Is the night chilly and dark?
This is one of the most beautiful of all lines written with a mid-line
rest. Christina Rossetti sweetly wrote with rests in her unpremedi-
tated art; and others have caught the sound of this metre and have
used it beautifully—Irish poets especially, as it happens. The great
iambic line, the national heroic line, need have nothing to fear from
this young and elastic metre. For the two ways are separately right,
as in another art are the ways of Gluck and Wagner.
3
But it will be an
excellent thing if poetry in the future, when in the mood for greater
movement, shall spring upon such a fantastic foot as that of
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1
Michael Drayton (1563–1631), English poet who wrote a number of long narrative
poems on heroes, both legendary and historic.
2
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), English Romantic poet. The line that follows is
from his poem “Christabel.”
3
Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–87) and Richard Wagner (1813–83), German
Romantic composers.
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Coleridge’s line, just cited, or of Christina Rossetti’s three-beat line
in The Prince’s Progress:
Hark! the bride weepeth!
It will be well for our writers that they should take this strong,
controlled, and leaping movement, that goes on living feet or living
wings, instead of the precipitate, and therefore rather helpless, haste
of metres for a long time too exclusively in use for the swifter lyrics:
Before the beginning of years,
1
for instance, or:
Cannon to left of them.
2
These two verses are those of great poets. But does not the metre of
these even rather trip and fall? And in lesser hands we know that these
anapaests and dactyls produce the most popular effect a really vulgar
music. They are so slight, too, that they flatter our national way of
speaking slippingly, without taking hold. If Coleridge’s hint comes to
be better obeyed, it will be much for the sake of Christina Rossetti’s
lovely example.
Those last words seems to rebuke for their slightness all the things
written in this brief article, as they suggested themselves to a lover of her
poetry. Her lovelier example is in the motive of all her song. Its sadness
was the one all-human sadness, its fear the one true fear . She, acquainted
with grief, found in grief no cause of offence. She left revolt to the
emotion of mere spectators and strangers. When one of the many
widows of the monarchs of France heard of the murder of her son and
whispered, “I will not say, my God, that it is too much, but it is much,”
she told one of the secrets of sorrow. The poet and saint who has now
passed from a world she never loved, lived a life of sacrifice, suffered
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1
Line from Algernon Charles Swinburne’s (1837–1909) “Atalanta in Calydon.”
2
Line from Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade.”
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many partings, unreluctantly endured the pains of her spirituality; but
she kept, in their quickness, her simple and natural love of love and
hope of joy, for another time. Such sufferings as hers do indeed refuse,
but they have not denied, delight. Delight is all their faith.
SOURCE
New Review 12 (February 1895).
SELECTED SECONDARY READING
Badeni, June. The Slender Tree: A Life of Alice Meynell. Padstow, Cornwall:
Tabb House, 1981.
Leighton, Angela. Victorian Women Poets: Writing Against the Heart.
London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992.
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