A History of English Prose Fiction Part 14

[Footnote 195: Charles Kingsley, preface to the "Fool of Quality."]

[Footnote 196: Kingsley's preface to "Fool of Quality."]

[Footnote 197: "Alwyn," "Anna St. Ives," "Hugh Trevor," "Bryan Perdue."]

[Footnote 198: Published in 1817, when the author was far advanced in years.]

III.

The publication of "Evelina," in 1778, made a sensation which the merits of the work fully justified. The story of Miss Burney's[199]

early life, her furtive attempts at fict.i.tious composition, the great variety of artistic and political characters who pa.s.sed in review before her observant eyes at Dr. Burney's house have been made familiar by her own diary and letters. Petted and admired by Johnson, Mrs.

Thrale, and the brilliant literary society of which they formed the centre, she lived sufficiently far into the present century to see the works of her early friends enrolled among the cla.s.sics or consigned to oblivion, and to recognize that the approval of posterity had been added to the early fame of her own writings. As a very young girl, unnoticed by the distinguished persons who frequented her father's house, she had studied with careful attention the characters and manners of those who talked and moved about her. A strong desire to reproduce the impressions which filled her mind induced Miss Burney in her sixteenth year to devote her stolen hours of seclusion to fict.i.tious composition. Discouraged in her early efforts by her stepmother, her habits of observation remained active, and took form, when the auth.o.r.ess was twenty five years old, in the famous novel of "Evelina." The book was issued secretly and anonymously, the publisher even being ignorant of the writer's true name. But the immediate popularity and admiration which greeted the work soon led to its open acknowledgment by the happy young auth.o.r.ess.

And "Evelina" fully deserved the praise and interest which it obtained and still excites. The aim was to describe the difficulties and sensations of a young girl just entering life. The heroine chosen by Miss Burney was one whose circ.u.mstances particularly well suited her to form the centre of a varied collection of characters and of a comprehensive picture of contemporary society. Well connected on her father's side, Evelina moved in fas.h.i.+onable circles with the Mirvan family. On account of the origin of her mother she was brought into close contact with humbler personages, with Madame Duval and the Brangtons. Hence this novel presents to the reader a variety of social scenes which gives it a value possessed by no other work of fiction of the eighteenth century. No novelist has described so well or so fully the aspect of the theatres, of Vauxhall and Ranelagh, of Bath in the season, of the ridottos and a.s.semblies of the London fas.h.i.+onable world.

The shops, the amus.e.m.e.nts and the manners of the middle cla.s.ses are made familiar to Evelina by her a.s.sociation with the Brangtons, and add greatly to the breadth of this valuable picture of metropolitan life.

With a feminine attention to detail, and a quick perception of salient characteristics, Miss Burney described the world about her so faithfully and picturesquely as to deserve the thanks of every student of social history. The novel of "Evelina," the letters of Horace Walpole and Mrs. Delany corroborate each other, and may be appropriately placed on the same shelf in a well-ordered library.

In the painting of manners Miss Burney was eminently successful. But she was hardly less so in a point in which excellence could not have been expected in so youthful a writer. The plot of "Evelina" is constructed with a skill worthy of a veteran. Fielding alone, of the eighteenth century novelists, can be said to surpa.s.s Miss Burney in this respect. The whole story of the mischances and misunderstanding of Evelina's intercourse with Lord Orville, the skill with which the various personages are brought into contact with each other and made to contribute to the final _denoument_, compose a truly artistic success.

The introduction of Macartney and his marriage to the supposed daughter of Sir John Belmont form a very happy and effective invention.

In regard to her sketches of character, it may be objected that Miss Burney lacked breadth of treatment, that she dwelt on one distinctive characteristic at the expense of the others. But still, Lord Orville, though somewhat too much of a model, and Mrs. Selwyn, though somewhat too habitually a wit, are vivid and life-like characters. The Brangtons and Sir Clement Willougby are nature itself, and the girlish nature of Evelina is betrayed in her letters with great felicity.

It is no small triumph for Miss Burney, who has had so many and so deserving compet.i.tors in the department of literature to which she contributed, that her novels should have remained in active circulation for more than a century after their publication. "Cecilia"

has much the same merits which distinguished "Evelina," and the two novels bid fair to hold their own as long as English fiction retains its popularity. Johnson considered Miss Burney equal to Fielding. But although she possessed qualities similar to his--constructive power and picturesqueness--she possessed them in a lesser degree. In the management of the difficulties of the epistolary form of novel-writing, she surpa.s.sed Richardson in verisimilitude and concentration.

Some readers of the present day object to Miss Burney's novels that they contain so many references to "delicacy" and "propriety" that an air of affectation is produced. But at the time when "Evelina" was written, a perpetual discretion in actions and words was absolutely necessary to a young woman who did not wish to be subjected to libertine advances. Society is now so much more generally refined that there is far less danger of such misconstruction, and far less need for a young girl to be always on her guard. A sound objection, on the ground of taste, may be made against the excessively prolonged account of Captain Mirvan's brutalities. The effect might have been as well produced in a much shorter s.p.a.ce, and the reader spared the uninteresting scenes which now fill so many repulsive pages. For this defect, however, we must blame the times more than the author.

Charlotte Lennox was the daughter of Sir James Ramsay, Lieutenant governor of New York, where she was born in 1720. When fifteen years of age she was sent to London, and there supported herself by her pen.

Johnson said that he had "dined at Mrs. Garrick's with Mrs. Carter, Miss Hannah More, and Miss f.a.n.n.y Burney: three such women are not to be found. I know not where I could find a fourth, except Mrs. Lennox, who is superior to them all." Such high praise was not called forth by Mrs.

Lennox's novels, which have little originality or power. "The Female Quixote" is an entertaining satire on the old French romances, but "Sophia," and "Euphemia" are without any special interest.

A writer of more ability, whose name is still remembered by novel-readers, is Mrs. Inchbald. She was overcome in early life by an enthusiasm for the stage; ran away from home to find theatrical employment, and remained for many years a popular London actress.

Although possessed of great and durable beauty, and the object of constant attention from aristocratic admirers, it is believed that her reputation continued unsullied. Her poverty, largely caused by a worthless husband, obliged her to perform the most menial labors. She rejoiced on one occasion that the approach of warmer weather released her from the duty of making fires, scouring the grate, sifting the cinders, and of going up and down three pair of long stairs with water or dirt. All this Mrs. Inchbald thought that she could cheerfully bear, but the labor of being a fine lady the remainder of the day was almost too much for her. "Last Thursday," she wrote to a friend, "I finished scouring my bed-chamber, while a coach with a coronet and two footmen waited at the door to take me an airing."

The same courage and industry were carried by Mrs. Inchbald into her literary labors, the profits of which enabled her to live with considerable comfort toward the end of her life. She left a large number of plays, many of which had been acted with success, and two novels, "A Simple Story," published in 1791, and "Nature and Art,"

published five years later. Neither of these works has much merit from a critical point of view. They are faulty in construction, and give frequent evidence of the auth.o.r.ess' lack of education.

Yet, in her ability to excite the interest and to move the feelings of her reader, Mrs. Inchbald met with great success. Her novels are of the pathetic order, and appeal to the sympathies with a sometimes powerful effect. Maria Edgeworth was deeply moved by the "Simple Story." "Its effect upon my feelings," she said after reading it for the fourth time, "was as powerful as at the first reading; I never read _any_ novel--I except none,--I never read any novel that affected me so strongly, or that so completely possessed me with the belief in the real existence, of all the persons it represents. I never once recollected the author whilst I was reading it; never said or thought, _that's a fine sentiment_,--or, _that is well expressed_--or, _that is well invented_; I believed all to be real, and was affected as I should be by the real scenes, if they had pa.s.sed before my eyes; it is truly and deeply pathetic."

The sisters, Harriet and Sophia Lee, wrote a number of stories gathered together under the rather unfortunate t.i.tle of "The Canterbury Tales,"

which had a long-continued popularity. "The Young Lady's Tale," and "The Clergyman's Tale" were written by Sophia; all the others, together with the novel "Errors of Innocence," belonged to Harriet. These stories have great narrative interest, and contain some powerfully drawn characters. Byron was deeply affected by some of them. Of the "German's Tale," he confessed: "It made a deep impression on me, and may be said to contain the germ of much that I have since written." It not only contained the germ of "Werner," but supplied the whole material for that tragedy. All the characters of the novel are reproduced by Byron except "Ida," whom he added. The plan of Miss Lee's work is exactly followed, as the poet admitted, and even the language is frequently adopted without essential change.

Charlotte Smith was a woman of talent and imagination who was driven to literature for aid in supporting a large family abandoned by their spendthrift father. She was among the most prolific novelists of her time, but only one work, "The Old Manor House," enjoyed more than a pa.s.sing reputation, or has any claim to particular mention here. The chief merit of Charlotte Smith's novels lies in their descriptions of scenery, an element only just entering into the work of the novelist.

Clara Reeve and the celebrated Mrs. Radcliffe did much to sustain the prominent position which women were taking in fict.i.tious composition, and their works will be commented upon in connection with the romantic revival, to which movement they were eminent contributors.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the number and variety of works of fiction increased with remarkable rapidity. The female s.e.x supplied its full share, both in amount and in excellence of work. But those who desire to see the advent of women into new walks of active life on the ground that their presence and partic.i.p.ation add to the purity of every occupation they adopt, can find no ill.u.s.tration of the theory in the connection of women with fict.i.tious composition. Mrs.

Behn, Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. Heywood, the earliest female novelists, produced the most inflammatory and licentious novels of their time. At a later period, during the eighteenth century, although some female writers exhibited a very exceptional refinement, the majority showed in this respect no marked superiority to their masculine contemporaries.

In our own time, whoever would make a list of those novels which are most evidently immoral in their teachings and licentious in their tone, would be obliged to seek them almost quite as much among the works of female writers, as among those of the rougher s.e.x.

To write a really excellent novel, is among the most difficult of literary feats. But to write a poor one has often been found an easy undertaking. The apparent facility of fict.i.tious composition has deceived great numbers of literary aspirants, and has filled the circulating libraries with a vast collection of thoroughly worthless productions. This unfortunate fecundity, to which the department of fiction is subject, began to be conspicuous at the end of the eighteenth century,[200] and excited much opposition to novels of all kinds. Hannah More, in her essays on female education, inveighed against the evil in terms which are quite as applicable at the present day. "Who are those ever multiplying authors, that with unparalleled fecundity are overstocking the world with their quick-succeeding progeny? They are _novel-writers_; the easiness of whose productions is at once the cause of their own fruitfulness, and of the almost infinitely numerous race of imitators to whom they give birth. Such is the frightful facility of this species of composition, that every raw girl, while she reads, is tempted to fancy that she can also write. And as Alexander, on perusing the Iliad, found by congenial sympathy the image of Achilles stamped on his own ardent soul, and felt himself the hero he was studying; and as Correggio, on first beholding a picture which exhibited the perfection of the graphic art, prophetically felt all his own future greatness, and cried out in rapture: 'And I, too, am a painter!' So a thorough-paced novel-reading miss, at the close of every tissue of hackneyed adventures, feels within herself the stirring impulse of corresponding genius, and triumphantly exclaims: 'And I, too, am an author!' The glutted imagination soon overflows with the redundance of cheap sentiment and plentiful incident, and, by a sort of arithmetical proportion, is enabled by the perusal of any three novels, to produce a fourth; till every fresh production, like the prolific progeny of Banquo, is followed by

'Another, and another, and another!'"

[Footnote 199: Afterward Madame D'Arblay.]

[Footnote 200: See the "Progress of Romance," by Clara Reeve, for the names of many now forgotten novels, for which room cannot be spared here.]

IV.

The writers who took the chief part in originating and sustaining the romantic revival in English fiction were Horace Walpole, Clara Reeve, and Mrs. Radcliffe. As we have called upon the testimony of Walpole so often in this work, and as we are now to consider him as an author, some account of his personal appearance may be of interest. "His figure," says Miss Hawkins, "was not merely tall, but long and slender to excess; his complexion, and particularly his hands, of a most unhealthy paleness. His eyes were remarkably bright and penetrating, very dark and lively:--his voice was not strong, but his tones were extremely pleasant, and, if I may so say, highly gentlemanly. I do not remember his common gait; he always entered a room in that style of affected delicacy which fas.h.i.+on had then made almost natural; _chapeau bras_ between his hands as if he wished to compress it, or under his arm; knees bent, and feet on tiptoe, as if afraid of a wet floor. His dress in visiting was most usually, in summer, when I most saw him, a lavender suit, the waistcoat embroidered with a little silver, or of white silk worked in the tambour, partridge silk stockings, and gold buckles, ruffles and frill generally lace. I remember, when a child, thinking him very much under-dressed, if at any time, except in mourning, he wore hemmed cambric. In summer, no powder, but his wig combed straight, and showing his very smooth, pale forehead, and queued behind; in winter, powder."

Posterity has cause to regret that Horace Walpole, of all men best fitted by personal knowledge and ability to draw a picture of the brilliant society of his time, should have contributed no work in the department of realistic fiction. Had the keen observation and experience of the world so conspicuous in his letters been brought to bear on a narrative of real life not less ably constructed than that of "The Castle of Otranto," an addition of no little value to the social history of the eighteenth century must have been the result. But although Walpole attempted no novel in which he might have depicted the fas.h.i.+onable life of which he was so faithful a chronicler, he yet tried an experiment in fiction for which he was peculiarly qualified by his antiquarian studies and his fondness for the arts and customs of feudal times.

The object of "The Castle of Otranto" was to unite the characteristic elements of the ancient romance with those of the modern novel. It was attempted to introduce into a narrative constructed with modern order and sequence, such supernatural events as controlled the incidents of romantic fiction. To accomplish this result, it was necessary that the _mise en scene_ should be impressive and awe-inspiring, that the reader's mind should be insensibly prepared by strange surroundings for extraordinary incidents. In his selection of age and scene, Walpole was highly judicious. He chose the feudal period, when superst.i.tion accorded the most ready belief to supernatural agencies. He introduced his reader to a huge, gloomy castle, furnished with towers, donjons, subterranean pa.s.sages, and trapdoors. He took for his hero, Manfred, a fierce and cruel knight, who had obtained his lands by duplicity and blood; whose chief aim in life was to continue his posterity in possession of wrongfully acquired power. He added subordinate characters of a kind to aid the effect of supernatural phenomena: a monk in a neighboring convent, who threatened Manfred with divine visitation for his crimes; superst.i.tious servants, whose easy fears exaggerated every unusual sound or foot-fall. He gave an interest to his narrative by the love pa.s.sages of Manfred's daughters which were perpetually at the mercy of the fate which hung over the castle. He introduced his supernatural effects in the form of a gigantic gauntlet seen on the stair-rail; a gigantic helmet which crushed the son and heir of the house as he was about to be married and to carry out his father's hopes; a skeleton monk who urged the rightful owner of the castle to take his own from the usurper's hands.

In attempting to make a regularly constructed narrative depend on supernatural agencies, Walpole undoubtedly succeeded as far as success was possible. But it may be said without hesitation that real success was unattainable. The very merits of "The Castle of Otranto" sustain this decision. The experiment had a fair trial. The narrative of Manfred's crimes and the punishments visited upon them, the characters and actions of subordinate personages are all managed with skill; while the supernatural agencies are introduced at the proper times and have the expected effects. But the real test of success in such an attempt must lie in the impression made on the reader's mind. And this impression may be of two kinds. Let us imagine a group of young people sitting about the dying embers of a fire on a winter's evening, listening to a ghost story. The black darkness, the sound of the wind howling without, accord with the low tones, the dim light, and the tale of horror within. The minds of the listeners insensibly cast off their ordinary trains of thought, and give themselves up to the unreal impressions of the moment. The incredible circ.u.mstances of the apparition are accepted without question or criticism; the impression of the supernatural occurrences is alone thought of and enjoyed. But now, let the same tale be read aloud after breakfast, from a newspaper, with the affidavits of the witnesses of the apparition duly attached, and only laughter can be the result.

Now let us apply the same test to romance. We open the "Morte d'Arthur"; we find ourselves at once in an unreal, almost nameless land; we meet with knights whom we only know apart by their armor, and queens ambling through pathless forests on white palfreys; we attend brilliant tournaments and witness superhuman deeds of arms. Our minds, untroubled by scepticism and thoughtless of unreality, yield themselves to the poetical illusion. Who stops to think of the incredible when Sir Bedivere hurls into the lake the dying Arthur's sword Excalibur?

Then Sir Bedivere departed, and went to the sword, and lightly took it up, and went to the water side, and there he bound the girdle about the hilts, and then he threw the sword as far into the water as he might, and there came an arm and an hand above the water, and met it, and caught it, and so shook it thrice and brandished, and then vanished away the hand with the sword in the water.

But when we are introduced to the castle of Otranto, when we know its dimensions and appearance, when we have become acquainted with its inmates, and have been made to realize that they are flesh and blood like ourselves, we cannot receive without a shock the account of the supernatural occurrences by which they are affected. It is as if we listened to a ghost story in the glare of daylight, and in the full activity of our critical faculties.

"Thou art no lawful prince," said Jerome; "thou art no prince--go, discuss thy claim with Frederic; and when that is done----" "It is done," replied Manfred; "Frederic accepts Matilda's hand, and is content to waive his claim, unless I have no male issue." As he spoke these words three drops of blood fell from the nose of Alfonso's statue.

"The Castle of Otranto" is an entertaining, well-constructed romance which may absorb the attention of young people, and indeed of all readers who delight in tales of superst.i.tious horror. But looked upon as a work of art, it contains discordant elements. The realistic manner in which the scene and characters are made known, the exact.i.tude with which the incidents are combined, are in constant opposition to that poetical ideality without which the supernatural cannot take possession of the mind. In reading the "Morte d'Arthur" we are insensibly penetrated by an atmosphere of the marvellous which makes a giant a natural companion, and a magic sword a necessary part of a warrior's outfit. But Manfred and his family are so essentially human, and their surroundings are so realistic, that the reader's sense of congruity is shocked by the introduction of a bleeding statue or a skeleton monk.

This was evident to Miss Clara Reeve, who hoped to attain success in the attempt to unite the romance and the novel by limiting all supernatural occurrences to the verge of probability. It is obvious that the line would be difficult to draw. Miss Reeve drew it at ghosts.

In the "Old English Baron," she took a story similar to that of Walpole. She presented to the reader a castle whose real owner had been murdered, and of which the rightful heir, ignorant of his birth, lived as a dependent on the wrongful possessor. The story turned on the revelation of the secret by the ghost of the murdered knight.

"G.o.d defend us!" said Edmund; "but I verily believe that the person that owned this armor lies buried under us." Upon this a dismal, hollow groan was heard, as if from underneath. A solemn silence ensued, and marks of fear were visible upon all three; the groan was thrice heard.

To the average mind of the present day Clara Reeve's ghost is not less improbable and incredible than Walpole's gigantic helmet. If the reader is prepared by the poetic nature of a narrative for the influence of the supernatural, he will receive all marvels with equal ease; but if he be not prepared, if his mind be occupied during the greater part of the work with actual and ordinary occurrences, any supernatural event is rejected. Miss Reeve introduced far less of the incredible than her predecessor, but she did not approach Walpole in the adaptation of her scenes to supernatural effects. It requires less imagination to see a figure walk out of a portrait in the gloomy castle of Otranto, than to hear the groan of Miss Reeve's spectre.

The incompatibility of the real and the unreal in the same work is sufficiently shown by the course pursued by the different writers who took part in the romantic revival. Walpole had boldly introduced a skeleton monk, and had crushed one of his characters by a gigantic helmet which fell from the sky. Clara Reeve's sense of congruity was shocked by so strong a contrast between the usual and the extraordinary, and therefore limited herself to a single supernatural effect, which might inspire fear while yet remaining within the bounds of superst.i.tious credulity. The next and greatest contributor to the romantic revival still further modified the methods of her predecessors, and in so modifying them, testified her doubts of their efficacy. Mrs. Radcliffe's plan was not to summon a spectre from his resting-place and to make him move among flesh and blood personages.

She simply described the superst.i.tious fears of her heroes and heroines, and sought to make her reader share in them. She excited the imagination by highly wrought scenes of horror, but instead of ascribing those scenes to the intervention of supernatural beings, she showed them to proceed from natural causes. The terror felt, by her fict.i.tious characters and shared by the reader, was not so much inspired by real dangers from without, as by superst.i.tious fear within.

The following pa.s.sage will ill.u.s.trate Mrs. Radcliffe's method of dealing with the supernatural:

From the disturbed slumber into which she then sunk, she was soon awakened by a noise, which seemed to arise within her chamber; but the silence that prevailed, as she tearfully listened, inclined her to believe that she had been alarmed by such sounds as sometimes occur in dreams, and she laid her head again upon the pillow.

A return of the noise again disturbed her, it seemed to come from that part of the room which communicated with the private staircase, and she instantly remembered the odd circ.u.mstance of the door having been fastened during the preceding night by some unknown hand. The late alarming suspicion concerning its communication also occurred to her. Her heart became faint with terror. Half raising herself from the bed, and gently drawing aside the curtain, she looked toward the door of the staircase, but the lamp that burnt on the hearth spread so feeble a light through the apartment, that the remote parts of it were lost in shadow. The noise, however, which she was convinced came from the door, continued. It seemed like that made by the undrawing of rusty bolts, and often ceased, and was then renewed more gently, as if the hand that occasioned it was restrained by a fear of discovery.

While Emily kept her eyes fixed on the spot, she saw the door move, and then slowly open, and perceived something enter the room, but the extreme duskiness prevented her perceiving what it was. Almost fainting with terror, she had yet sufficient command over herself to check the shriek that was escaping from her lips, and, letting the curtain drop from her hand, continued to observe in silence the motions of the mysterious figure she saw. It seemed to glide along the remote obscurity of the apartment, then paused, and, as it approached the hearth, she perceived, in the stronger light, what appeared to be a human figure. Certain remembrances now struck upon her heart, and almost subdued the feeble remains of her spirit. She continued, however, to watch the figure, which remained for some time motionless, but then, advancing slowly toward the bed, stood silently at the feet, where the curtains, being a little open, allowed her still to see it; terror, however, had now deprived her of the power of discrimination, as well as that of utterance.[201]