Читать книгу Woman's Work in English Fiction, from the Restoration to the Mid-Victorian Period - Clara Helen Whitmore - Страница 6

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In the many volumes containing the records of the past, the names of few women appear, and the number is still smaller of those who have won fame in art or literature. Sappho, however, has shown that poetic feeling and expression are not denied the sex; Jeanne d'Arc was chosen to free France; Mrs. Somerville excelled in mathematics; Maria Mitchell ranked among the great astronomers; Rosa Bonheur had the stroke of a master. These women possessed genius, and one is tempted to ask why more women have not left enduring work, especially in the realm of art. The Madonna and Child, what a subject for a woman's brush! Yet the joy of maternity which shines in a mother's eyes has seldom been expressed by her in words or on canvas. It was left for a man, William Blake, to write some of our sweetest songs of childhood.

But as soon as the novel appeared, a host of women writers sprang up. Women have always been story-tellers. Long before Homer sang of the fall of Troy, the Grecian matrons at their spinning related to their maids the story of Helen's infidelity; and, as they thought of their husbands and sons who had fallen for her sake, the story did not lack in fervour. But the minstrels have always had this advantage over the story-tellers: their words, sung to the lyre, were crystallised in rhythmic form, so that they resisted the action of time, while only the substance of the stories, not the words which gave them beauty and power, could be retained, and consequently they crumbled away. When the novel took on literary form, women began to write. They were not imitators of men, but opened up new paths of fiction, in many of which they excelled.

The first woman to essay prose fiction as an art was Margaret, Queen of Navarre. In the seventy-two tales of The Heptameron, a book written before the dawn of realism, she related many anecdotes of her brother, Francis the First, and his courtiers. Woman's permanent influence over the novel began about 1640, and was due directly to the Hotel Rambouillet, in whose grand salon there mingled freely for half a century the noblest minds of France. This salon was presided over by the Marquise de Rambouillet, who had left the licentious court of Henry the Fourth, and had formed here in her home between the Louvre and the Tuileries a little academy, where Corneille read his tragedies before they were published, and Bousset preached his first sermon, while among the listeners were the beautiful Duchess de Longueville, Madame de Lafayette, Madame de Sévigné and Mademoiselle de Scudéri, besides other persons of royal birth or of genius. The ladies of this salon became the censors of the manners, the literature, and even the language of France. Here was the first group of women writers whose fame extended beyond their own country, and has lasted, though somewhat dimmed, to the present. Since the seventeenth century the influence of women novelists has been ever widening.

In England, women entered the domain of literature later than in France, Spain, or Italy. Not until the Restoration did they take any active part in the world of letters; and not until the reign of George the Third did they make any marked contribution to fiction.

The first woman writer of prose fiction in England was the thrice noble and illustrious Princess Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle. During the Commonwealth, the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle had lived in exile, but with the restoration of Charles the Second, in 1660, they returned to London, where the Duchess soon became a notable personage. Crowds gathered in the park merely to see her pass, attracted partly by her fame as a writer, partly by the singularities she affected. Her black coach furnished with white curtains and adorned with silver trimmings instead of gilt, with the footmen dressed in long black coats, was readily distinguished from other carriages in the park. Her peculiarities of dress were no less marked. Her long black juste-au-corps, her hair hanging in curls about her bared neck, her much beplumed velvet cap of her own designing, were objects of ridicule to the court wits, who even asserted that she wore more than the usual number of black patches upon her comely face.

More singular than her habiliments were her pretentions as a woman of letters, which caused the courtiers to laugh at her conceit. She was evidently aware of this failing as she writes in her Autobiography: "I fear my ambition inclines to vain-glory, for I am very ambitious; yet 't is neither for beauty, wit, titles, wealth, or power, but as they are steps to raise me to Fame's tower, which is to live by remembrance in after-ages."

But, notwithstanding her detractors, she received sufficient praise to foster her belief in her own genius. Her plays were well received. Her poems were declared by her admirers equal to Shakespeare's. Her philosophical works, which she dedicated to the great universities of Oxford and Cambridge, were accepted with fulsome flattery of their author. When she visited the Royal Society at Arundel House, the Lord President met her at the door, and, with mace carried before him, escorted her into the room, where many experiments were performed for her pleasure. In 1676, a folio volume was published, entitled Letters and Poems in Honour of the Incomparable Princess Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, written by men of high rank and of learning, with the following dedication by the University of Cambridge:

To Margaret the First:

Princess of Philosophers:

Who hath dispelled errors:

Appeased the difference of opinions:

And restored Peace

To Learning's Commonwealth.

Yet this praise was not all flattery, for the scholarly Evelyn always speaks of her with respect, and after visiting her writes, "I was much pleased with the extraordinary fanciful habit, garb, and discourse of the Duchess."

Amid the arid wastes of her philosophical works are green spots enlivened by good sense and humour that have a peculiar charm. At the time when the trained minds of the Royal Society were broadening scientific knowledge by careful experiments, this lady, with practically no education, sat herself down to write her thoughts upon the great subjects of matter and motion, mind and body. She was emboldened to publish her opinions, for, as she says: "Although it is probable, that some of the Opinions of Ancient Philosophers in Ancient times are erroneous, yet not all, neither are all Modern Opinions Truths, but truly I believe, there are more Errors in the One than Truth in the Other." Some of her explanations are very artless, as when she decides that passions are created in the heart and not in the head, because "Passion and Judgment seldom agree."

Her philosophical works are often compounded of fiction and fact. Her book called The Description of a New World called the Blazing World reminds one of some of the marvellous stories of Jules Verne. According to the story a merchant fell in love with a lady while she was gathering shells on the sea-coast, and carried her away in a light vessel. They were driven to the north pole, thence to the pole of another world which joined it. The conjunction of these two poles doubled the cold, so that it was insupportable, and all died but the lady. Bear-men conducted her to a warmer clime, and presented her to the emperor of the Blazing World, whose palace was of gold, with floors of diamonds. The emperor married the lady, and, at her desire to study philosophy, sent for the Duchess of Newcastle, "a plain and rational writer," to be her teacher. The story at this point rambles into philosophy.

Nature's Pictures drawn by Fancy's Pencil contains many suggestions for poems and novels. Particularly beautiful is the fragment of a story of a lord and lady who were forbidden to love in this world, but who died the same night, and met on the shores of the Styx. "Their souls did mingle and intermix as liquid essences, whereby their souls became as one." They preferred to enjoy themselves thus rather than go to Elysium, where they might be separated, and where the talk of the shades was always of the past, which to them was full of sorrow.

The Duchess of Newcastle wrote a series of letters on beauty, eloquence, time, theology, servants, wit, and kindred subjects, often illustrated by a little story, reminding the reader of some of the Spectator papers, which delighted the next generation. As in those papers, characters were introduced. Mrs. P.I., the Puritan dame, appears in several letters. She had received sanctification, and consequently considered all vanities of dress, such as curls, bare necks, black patches, fans, ribbons, necklaces, and pendants, temptations of Satan and the signs of damnation. In a subsequent letter she becomes a preaching sister, and the Duchess has been to hear her, and thus comments upon the meeting: "There were a great many holy sisters and holy brethren met together, where many took their turns to preach; for as they are for liberty of conscience, so they are for liberty of preaching. But there were more sermons than learning, and more words than reason."

This is the first example of the use of letters in English fiction. In the next century it was adopted by Richardson for his three great novels, Pamela, Clarissa Harlowe, and Sir Charles Grandison; it was used by Smollett in the novel of Humphry Clinker, and became a popular mode of composition with many lesser writers.

But posterity is chiefly indebted to the Duchess of Newcastle for her life of her husband and the autobiography that accompanies it. Of the former Charles Lamb wrote that it was a jewel for which "no casket is rich enough." Of the beaux and belles who were drawn by the ready pens of the playwrights of the court of Charles the Second none are worthy of a place beside the Duke of Newcastle and his incomparable wife.

With rare felicity she has described her home life in London with her brothers and sisters before her marriage. Their chief amusements were a ride in their coaches about the streets of the city, a visit to Spring Gardens and Hyde Park; and sometimes a sail in the barges on the river, where they had music and supper. She announces with dignity her first meeting with the Duke of Newcastle in Paris, where she was maid of honour to the Queen Mother of England: "He was pleased to take some particular notice of me, and express more than an ordinary affection for me; insomuch that he resolved to choose me for his second wife." And in another place she writes: "I could not, nor had not the power to refuse him, by reason my affections were fixed on him, and he was the only person I ever was in love with. Neither was I ashamed to own it, but gloried therein." Here is the charm of brevity. Richardson would have blurred these clearly cut sentences by eight volumes.

In the biography of her husband she relates faithfully his services to Charles the First at the head of an army which he himself had raised; his final defeat near York by the Parliamentary forces; and his escape to the continent in 1644. Then followed his sixteen years of exile in Paris, Rotterdam, and Antwerp, where "he lived freely and nobly," entertaining many persons of quality, although he was often in extreme poverty, and could obtain credit merely by the love and respect which his presence inspired. What a sad picture is given of the return of the exiles to their estates, which had been laid waste in the Civil War and later confiscated by Cromwell! But how the greatness of the true gentleman shines through it all, who, as he viewed one of his parks, seven of which had been completely destroyed, simply said, "He had been in hopes it would not have been so much defaced as he found it."

In the closing chapter the Duchess gives Discourses Gathered from the Mouth of my noble Lord and Husband. These show both sound sense and a broad view of affairs. She writes:

"I have heard My Lord say,

I

"That those which command the Wealth of a Kingdom, command the hearts and hands of the People.

XXXIII

"That many Laws do rather entrap than help the subject."

Clarendon, who thought but poorly of the Duke's abilities as a general, gives the same characterisation of him: a man of exact proportion, pleasant, witty, free but courtly in his manner, who loved all that were his friends, and hated none that were his enemies, and who had proved his loyalty to his king by the sacrifice of his property and at the risk of his life.

Perhaps the Duchess of Newcastle has unwittingly drawn a true representation of the great body of English cavaliers, and has partly removed the stain which the immoralities of the court afterward put upon the name. These biographies give a story of marital felicity with all the characteristics of the domestic novel.

At this time the English novel was a crude, formless thing, without dignity in literature. The Duchess of Newcastle, who aspired to be ranked with Homer and Plato, would have spurned a place among writers of romance, although her genius was primarily that of the novelist. She constantly thought of plots, which she jotted down at random, her common method of composition. She has described characters, and has left many bright pictures of the manners and customs of her age. Her style of writing is better than that of many of her more scholarly contemporaries, who studied Latin models and strove to imitate them. She wrote as she thought and felt, so that her style is simple when not lost in the mazes of philosophical speculation. She had all the requisites necessary to write the great novel of the Restoration.

But in the next century her voluminous writings were forgotten, and the casual visitor to Westminster Abbey who paused before the imposing monument in the north transept read with amused indifference the quaint inscription which marks the tomb of the noble pair; that she was the second wife of the Duke of Newcastle, that her name was Margaret Lucas; "a noble family, for all the brothers were valiant and all the sisters were virtuous." To Charles Lamb belongs the credit of discovering the worth of her writings. Delighting in oddities, but quick to discern truth from falsehood, he loved to pore over the old folios containing her works, and could not quite forgive his sister Mary for speaking disrespectfully of "the intellectuals of a dear favourite of mine of the last century but one—the thrice noble, chaste and virtuous, but again somewhat fantastical and original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle."

Her desire for immortality is nearer its fulfilment to-day than at any previous time. A third edition of the Life of the Duke of Newcastle was published in 1675, the year after her death. Nearly two hundred years later, in 1872, it was included in Russell Smith's "Library of Old Authors," and since then a modernised English edition and a French edition of this book have been published. No one can read this biography without feeling the charm of the quaint, childlike personality of the Duchess of Newcastle.

While all London was talking of the "mad Duchess of Newcastle," another lady was living there no less eminent as a writer, but so distinguished for her wit, freedom of temper, and brilliant conversation, that even the great Dryden sought her friendship, and Sothern, Rochester, and Wycherley were among her admirers. She was named "Astrea," and hailed as the wonder and glory of her sex. But Aphra Behn's talents brought her a more substantial reward than fame. Her plays were presented to crowded houses; her novels were in every library, and she obtained a large income from her writings; she was the first English woman to earn a living by her pen.

In her early youth, Mrs. Behn lived for a time at Surinam in Dutch Guiana, where her father was governor. On one of the plantations was a negro in whose fate she became deeply interested. She learned from his own lips about his life in Africa, and was herself an eye witness of the indignities and tortures he suffered in slavery. She was so deeply impressed by his horrible fate, that on her return to London she related his story to King Charles the Second and at his request elaborated it into the novel Oroonoko.

According to the story, Oroonoko, an African warrior, was married to Imoinda, a beautiful maiden of his own people. His grandfather, a powerful chieftain, also fell in love with the beautiful Imoinda and placed her in his harem. When he found that her love for Oroonoko still continued, he sold her secretly into slavery and her rightful husband could learn nothing of her whereabouts. Later Oroonoko and his men were invited by the captain of a Dutch trading ship to dine on board his vessel. They accepted the invitation, but, after dinner, the captain seized his guests, threw them into chains, and carried them to the West Indies, where he sold them as slaves. Here Oroonoko found his wife, whose loss he had deeply mourned, and they were reunited. Oroonoko, however, indignant at the treachery practised against himself and his men, incited the slaves to a revolt. They were overcome, and Oroonoko was tied to a whipping-post and severely punished. As he found that he could not escape, he resolved to die. But rather than leave Imoinda to the cruelty of her owners, he determined to slay first his wife, then his enemies, lastly himself. He told his plans to Imoinda, who willingly accompanied him into the forest, where he put her to death. When he saw his wife dead at his feet, his grief was so great that it deprived him of the strength to take vengeance on his enemies. He was again captured and led to a stake, where faggots were placed about him. The author has described his death with a faithfulness to detail that carries with it the impress of truth: "'My Friends, am I to die, or to be whipt?' And they cry'd, 'Whipt! no, you shall not escape so well.' And then he reply'd, smiling, 'A blessing on thee'; and assured them they need not tie him, for he would stand fix'd like a Rock, and endure Death so as should encourage them to die: 'But if you whip me' [said he], 'be sure you tie me fast.'"

The popularity of the book was instantaneous. It passed through several editions. It was translated into French and German, and adapted for the German stage, while Sothern put it on the stage in England. It created almost as great a sensation as did Uncle Tom's Cabin two hundred years later. Like Mrs. Stowe's novel it had a strong moral influence, as it was among the earliest efforts to call the attention of Europe to the evils of the African slave trade. Moreover, this her first novel gave Mrs. Behn an acknowledged place as a writer.

Oroonoko marks a distinct advance in English fiction. Nearly all novels before this had consisted of a series of stories held together by a loosely formed plot running through a number of volumes, sometimes only five, but occasionally, as in The Grand Cyrus, filling ten quartos. Their form was such that like the Thousand and One Nights they could be continued indefinitely. Most of these novels belonged either to the pastoral romance or the historical allegory. In the former the ladies and gentlemen who in a desultory sort of way carried on the plot were disguised as shepherds and shepherdesses and lived in idyllic state in Arcadia. In the latter they masqueraded under the names of kings and queens of antiquity and entered with the flourish of trumpets and the sound of drums.

Oroonoko was the first English novel with a well developed plot. It moves along rapidly, without digression, to its tragic conclusion. Not until Fielding wrote Joseph Andrews was the plot of any English novel so definitely wrought. The lesser writer had a slight advantage over the greater. Mrs. Behn's novel is constructed upon dramatic lines, so that it holds the interest more closely to the main characters, and the end is awaited with intense expectation; while Fielding chose the epic form, which is more discursive, and Joseph Andrews like all his novels is excessively tame, almost hackneyed in its conclusion. Mrs. Behn's black hero is the first distinctly drawn character in English fiction, the first one that has any marked personality. Sometimes the enthusiasm with which he is described brings a smile to the lips of the modern reader and reminds one of the heroic savages of James Fenimore Cooper and Helen Hunt Jackson. She writes of him: "He was pretty tall, but of a Shape the most exact that can be Fancy'd: The most famous Statuary could not form the Figure of a Man more admirably turned from Head to Foot.... There was no one Grace wanting, that bears the Standard of true Beauty." And thus she continues the description in the superlative degree.

But the story is for the most part realistic. Although the scenes in Africa show the influence of the French heroic novels, as if the author were afraid to leave her story in its simple truth but must adorn it with purple and ermine, as soon as it is transferred to Surinam, where Mrs. Behn had lived, it becomes real. It has local colouring, at that time an almost unknown attribute. It has the atmosphere of the tropics. The descriptions are vivid, and often photographic. Occasionally they are exaggerated, but few travellers to a region of which their hearers know nothing have been able to resist the temptation to deviate from the exact truth. But the whole novel, even at this late day, leaves one with the impression that it is a true biography.

In the history of the English novel, in which Pamela is given an important place as the morning star which heralded the great light of English realism about to burst upon the world, this well arranged, definite, picturesque story of Oroonoko, whose author was reposing quietly within the hallowed precincts of Westminster Abbey fifty years before Richardson introduced Pamela to an admiring public, should not be forgotten. Before Pamela was published, the complete works of Mrs. Behn passed through eight editions. The plots of all her novels are well constructed, with little extraneous matter, but with the exception of Oroonoko the characters are shadowy beings, many of whom meet with a violent death. The Nun or the Perjured Duty has only five characters, all of whom perish in the meshes of love. The Fair Jilt or the Amours of Prince Tarquin and Miranda, founded on incidents that came to the author's knowledge during her residence in Antwerp, is well fitted for the columns of a modern yellow journal; the beautiful heroine causes the death of everyone who stands in the way of her love or her ambition, but she finally repents and lives happy ever after. Mrs. Behn's style is always careless, owing to her custom of writing while entertaining friends.

A great change took place in the public taste during the next hundred years, so that Mrs. Behn's novels, plays, and poems fell into disrepute. Sir Walter Scott tells the story of his grand-aunt who expressed a desire to see again Mrs. Behn's novels, which she had read with delight in her youth. He sent them to her sealed and marked "private and confidential." The next time he saw her, she gave them back with the words:

"Take back your bonny Mrs. Behn, and, if you will take my advice, put her in the fire, for I find it impossible to get through the very first novel. But is it not a very odd thing that I, an old woman of eighty and upward, sitting alone, feel myself ashamed to read a book which sixty years ago I have heard read aloud for the amusement of large circles, consisting of the first and most creditable society in London?"

Mrs. Behn has been accused of great license in her conduct and of gross immorality in her writings. Her friend and biographer says of the former: "For my part I knew her intimately, and never saw ought unbecoming the just modesty of our sex, though more free and gay than the folly of the precise will allow." For the latter the fashion must be blamed more than she. Mrs. Behn was not actuated by the high moral principles of Mademoiselle de Scudéri and Madame de Lafayette, with whom love was an ennobling passion, nor was she writing for the refined men and women of the Hotel Rambouillet; she was striving to earn a living by pleasing the court of Charles the Second, and in that she was eminently successful.

Nearly a quarter of a century after the death of Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley published anonymously the first two volumes of the New Atlantis, the book by which she is chiefly known, under the title of Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality of both Sexes from the New Atalantis, an Island in the Mediterranean. Mrs. Manley was a Tory, and she peopled the New Atalantis with members of the Whig party under Marlborough as Prince Fortunatus. The book is written in the form of a conversation carried on by Astrea, Virtue, and Intelligence, a personification of the Court Gazette. They described the Whig leaders so accurately, and related the scandal of the court so faithfully, that, although fictitious names were used, no key was needed to recognise the personages in the story.

The publisher and printer were arrested for libel, but Mrs. Manley came forward and owned the authorship. In her trial she was placed under a severe cross-examination by Lord Sunderland, who attempted to learn where she had obtained her information. She persisted in her statement that no real characters were meant, that it was all a work of imagination, but if it bore any resemblance to truth it must have come to her by inspiration. Upon Lord Sunderland's objecting to this statement, on the grounds that so immoral a book bore no trace of divine impulse, she replied that there were evil angels as well as good, who might possess equal powers of inspiration. The book was published in May, 1709; in the following February, she was discharged by order of the Queen's Bench.

Soon after her discharge from court, she wrote a third and fourth volume of the New Atalantis under the title, Memoirs of Europe toward the Close of the Eighth Century written by Eginardus, Secretary and Favorite to Charlemagne, and done into English, by the Translator of the New Atalantis. Here she has followed the French models. There is a loosely constructed plot, and the characters tell a series of stories. Many of the writers of Queen Anne's reign are described with none of that lustre that surrounds them now, but as they appeared to a cynical woman who knew them well. She refers to Steele as Don Phaebo, and ridicules his search for the philosopher's stone; and laments that Addison, whom she calls Maro, should prostitute his talents for gold, when he might become a second Vergil.

Mrs. Manley had been well trained to write a book like the New Atalantis. At sixteen, an age when Addison and Steele were at the Charterhouse preparing for Oxford, her father, Sir Roger Manley, died. A cousin, taking advantage of her helplessness, deceived her by a false marriage, and after three years abandoned her. Upon this she entered the household of the Duchess of Cleveland, the mistress of Charles the Second, who soon tired of her and dismissed her from her service. She then began to write, and by her plays and political articles soon won an acknowledged place among the writers of Grub Street.

From the many references to her in the letters and journals of the period, she seems to have been popular with the writers of both political parties. Swift writes to Stella that she is a very generous person "for one of that sort," which many little incidents prove. She dedicated her play Lucius to Steele, with whom she was on alternate terms of enmity and friendship, as a public retribution for her ridicule of him in the New Atalantis, saying that "scandal between Whig and Tory goes for not." Steele, equally generous, wrote a prologue for the play, perhaps in retribution for some of the harsh criticisms of her in the Tatler. All readers of Pope remember the reference to her in the Rape of the Lock, where Lord Petre exclaims that his honour, name and praise shall live

As long as Atalantis shall be read.

Although Mrs. Manley's pen was constantly and effectively employed in the interest of the Tory party, she being at one time the editor of the Examiner, the Tory organ, none of her writings had the popularity of the New Atalantis. It went through seven editions and was translated into the French. The book has no intrinsic merit; its language is scurrilous and obscene; but it appealed to the eager curiosity of the public concerning the private immoralities of men and women who were prominent at court. Human nature in its pages furnishes a contemptible spectacle.

The New Atalantis has now, however, assumed a permanent place in the history of fiction. This species of writing had been common, in France, but it was the first English novel in which political and personal scandal formed the groundwork of a romance. Swift followed its general plan in Gulliver's Travels, placing his political enemies in public office in Lilliput and Brobdingnag, only he so wrought upon them with his imagination that he gave to the world a finished work of art, while Mrs. Manley has left only the raw material with which the artist works. Smollett's political satire, Adventures of an Atom, was also suggested by the New Atalantis, but here the earlier writer has surpassed the later. All three of these writers took a low and cynical view of humanity.

The women novelists who directly followed Mrs. Manley did not have her strength, but they had a delicacy that has given to their writings a subtle charm. From the time of Sarah Fielding to the present threatened reaction the writings of women have been marked by chastity of thought and purity of expression.