Читать книгу Woman's Work in English Fiction, from the Restoration to the Mid-Victorian Period - Clara Helen Whitmore - Страница 8

Table of Contents

About the middle of the eighteenth century, some interesting novels were written by women, but their fame was so overshadowed by the early masters of English fiction, who were then writing, that they have been almost forgotten. For in 1740 Pamela was published, the first novel of Samuel Richardson; in 1771, Humphry Clinker appeared, the last novel of Tobias Smollett; and during the thirty-one years between these two dates all the books of Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, and Smollett were given to the world, and determined the nature of the English novel. The plot of most of their fifteen realistic novels is practically the same. The hero falls in love with a beautiful young lady, not over seventeen, and there is a conflict between lust and chastity. The hero, balked of his prey, travels up and down the world, where he meets with a series of adventures, all very much alike, and all bearing very little on the main plot. At last fate leads the dashing hero to the church door, where he confers a ring on the fair heroine, a paltry piece of gold, the only reward for her fidelity, with the hero thrown in, much the worse for wear, and the curtain falls with the sound of the wedding bells in the distance.

The range of these novels is narrow. They describe a world in which the chief occupation is eating, drinking, swearing, gambling, and fighting. Their chief artistic excellence is the strength and vigour with which these low scenes are described. Sidney Lanier says of them: "They play upon life as upon a violin without a bridge, in the deliberate endeavour to get the most depressing tones possible from the instrument." And Taine, who could hardly endure any of them, writes of Fielding what he implies of the others: "One thing is wanted in your strongly-built folks—refinement; the delicate dreams, enthusiastic elevation, and trembling delicacy exist in nature equally with coarse vigour, noisy hilarity, and frank kindness."

The women who essayed the art of fiction during these years did not have so firm a grasp of the pen as their male contemporaries, and they have added no portraits to the gallery of fiction; but they saw and recorded many interesting scenes of British life which quite escaped the quick-sighted Fielding, or Sterne with the microscopic eyes.

In 1744, when Richardson had written only one book, and Fielding had published only two, before Tom Jones or Clarissa Harlowe had seen the light of day, Sarah Fielding published David Simple, under the title of The Adventures of David Simple, containing an account of his travels through the cities of London and Westminster in the search of a real friend, by a Lady. The author commenced the story as a satire on society. For a long time David's search is unsuccessful. Although he changed his lodgings every week, he could hear of no one who could be trusted. Many, to be sure, dropped hints of their own excellence, and the pity that they had to live with inferior neighbours. Among these was Mr. Spatter, who introduced him to Mr. Varnish. The former saw the faults of people through a magnifying glass; while the latter, when he mentioned a person's failings, added, "He was sure they had some good in them." But David soon learned that Mr. Varnish was no readier to assist a friend in need than the fault-finding Mr. Spatter.

Like her brother Henry, Sarah Fielding is often sarcastic. In one of the chapters she leaves David to his sufferings, "lest it should be thought," she added, "I am so ignorant of the world as not to know the proper time of forsaking people." But the pessimistic vein of the first volume changes to a more optimistic tone in the second. David, in his search for one friend, finds three. Fortunately these consist of a brother and sister and a lady in love with the brother. Even at this early time, an author had no doubts as to how a novel should end. The heading of the last chapter in the book informs us that it contains two weddings, "and consequently the Conclusion of the Book."

In its construction, the plot is similar to that of the other novels of the period. David has plenty of time at his disposal, and listens with more patience than the reader to the detailed history of all the people he meets, and often begs a casual acquaintance to favour him with the story of his life.

But Sarah Fielding's chief charm to her women readers is the feminine view of her times. In David Simple we have the pleasure of travelling through England, but with a woman as our guide. As Harry Fielding travelled between Bath and London, the fair reader wonders what he reported to Mrs. Fielding of what he had seen and heard. Surely at these various inns there must have been some by-play of real affection, some act of modest kindness, some incident of delicate humour. Did he regale Mrs. Fielding with the scenes he has described for his readers? Probably when she asked him if anything had happened en route, he merely yawned and replied, "Oh, nothing worth while." He had too much reverence for his wife to repeat these low scenes to her, and we suspect he had eyes for no others. What would Addison or Steele have seen in the same place?

Sarah Fielding also takes her characters on a stage-coach journey, but here we sit beside the fair heroine, an intelligent lady, and gaze at the men who sit opposite her. There is the Butterfly with his hair pinned up in blue papers, wearing a laced waistcoat, and humming an Italian air. He admires nothing but the ladies, and offered some little familiarity to our heroine, which she repulsed; upon this he paid her the greatest respect imaginable, being convinced, as she would not suffer any intimacy from him, she must be one of the most virtuous women that had ever been born. There is the Atheist, who being alone with her for a few moments makes love to her in an insinuating manner, and tries to prove to her that pleasure is the only thing to be sought in life, and assures her that she may follow her inclinations without a crime, "while she knew that nothing could so much oppose her gratifying him, as her pleasing herself." Then there is the Clergyman who makes honourable love to her, but by doing so puts an end to the friendship which she had hoped might be between them; until at the end of the journey, "she almost made a resolution never to speak to a man again, beginning to think it impossible for a man to be civil to a woman, unless he had some designs upon her."

Whether or not women have ever portrayed the masculine sex truthfully is an open question. But a gentleman mellowed and softened in the light of ladies' smiles is quite a different creature from the same gentleman when seen among the sterner members of his own sex, and there are certain phases of men's characters portrayed in the novels of women which Fielding, Scott, and Thackeray seem never to have seen.

Miss Fielding descants upon many familiar scenes in a manner that would have made her a valuable contributor to the Tatler or Spectator. All kinds of human nature interested her. There is the man who advises David as a friend to buy a certain stock which he himself is secretly trying to sell because he knows it has decreased in value, thus showing that money transactions in London in the reigns of the Georges differed little from money transactions on the Stock Exchange to-day. In some respects, however, society has improved since the days of Sarah Fielding. She describes the gentlemen of social prominence who tumble up to the carriages of ladies who are driving through Covent Garden in the morning, and present them with cabbages or other vegetables which they have picked up from the stalls, too intoxicated to know that their conduct is ridiculous. There are the crowds at the theatres who show their displeasure with a playwright by making so much noise that his play cannot be heard on its first night and so is condemned. Other writers of the period complain of having received this kind of treatment at the hands of the gentlemen mob. And then we are introduced to a scene in the fashionable West End which is a familiar one to-day, where the ladies of quality have their whist assemblies and spend all the morning visiting each other and discussing how the cards were played the previous evening and why certain tricks were lost.

We recognise the fact, however, that Miss Fielding's knowledge of life was but slight. She writes from the standpoint of a spectator, not like her brother as one who had been a part of it. She was one of that group of gentlewomen who gathered around Richardson and heard him read Clarissa, or discussed life and books with him at the breakfast table in the summer-house at North End, Hammersmith. Life was not lived there, but philosophy often sat at the board, and there was fine penetration into the characters and manners of men. Richardson transferred to Miss Fielding the compliment which Dr. Johnson had bestowed upon him, and it was not undeserved by the author of David Simple:

"What a knowledge of the human heart! Well might a critical judge of writing say, as he did to me, that your late brother's knowledge of it was not (fine writer as he was) comparable to yours. His was but as the knowledge of the outside of a clock-work machine, while yours was that of all the finer springs and movements of the inside."

It is not difficult to conjure up a picture of the literary gentlemen and gentlewomen who used to breakfast with Richardson in the summer-house at North End; the gentlemen in their many-coloured velvet suits, the ladies wearing broad hoops, loose sacques, and Pamela hats. One of these ladies was Charlotte Ramsay, better known by her married name of Mrs. Lennox. Her father, Colonel James Ramsay, was lieutenant-governor of New York, where his daughter Charlotte was born in 1720. She was sent to England at the age of fifteen, and soon after her father died, leaving her unprovided for. She turned her attention to literature as a means of livelihood, and at once became a favourite in the literary circles of London, where she met and won the esteem of the great Dr. Johnson.

When her first novel, The Life of Harriet Stuart, was published, he showed his appreciation of its author in a unique manner. At his suggestion, the Ivy Lane Club and its friends entertained Mrs. Lennox and her husband at the Devil's Tavern with a night of festivity. After an elaborate supper had been served, a hot apple-pie was brought in, stuffed full of bay-leaves, and Johnson with appropriate ceremonies crowned the author with a wreath of laurel. The night was passed in mirth and conversation; tea and coffee were often served; and not until the creaking of the street doors reminded them that it was eight o'clock in the morning did the guests, twenty in number, leave the tavern.

Mrs. Lennox's claim to a place in English literature rests solely upon her novel, The Female Quixote, published in 1752. Arabella, the heroine, is the daughter of a marquis who has retired into the country, where he lives remote from society. Her mother is dead; her father is immersed in his books, so that Arabella is left alone, and whiles away the hours by reading the novels of Mademoiselle de Scudéri. Her three great novels, Clelia, The Grand Cyrus and Ibrahim, are historical allegories, in which the France of Louis XIV is given an historical setting, and his courtiers masquerade under the names of famous men of antiquity. There is no attempt at historical accuracy. But to Arabella these books represented true history and depicted the real life of the world.

In a fine satirical passage Arabella informs Mr. Selvin, a man so deeply read in ancient history that he fixed the date of any occurrence by Olympiads, not years, that Pisistratus had been inspired to enslave his country because of his love for Cleorante. Mr. Selvin wonders how this important fact could have escaped his own research, and conceives a great admiration for Arabella's learning.

In the novels of Mademoiselle de Scudéri the characters, even in moments of extreme danger, entertain each other with stories of their past experiences. When Arabella has unexpected guests she bids her maid relate to them the history of her mistress. She instructs her to "relate exactly every change of my countenance, number all my smiles, half-smiles, blushes, turnings pale, glances, pauses, full-stops, interruptions; the rise and falling of my voice, every motion of my eyes, and every gesture which I have used for these ten years past: nor omit the smallest circumstance that relates to me."

All the people Arabella meets are changed by her fancy into the characters of her favourite books. In common people she sees princes in disguise. If a man approaches her, she fancies that he is about to bear her away to some remote castle, or to mention the subject of love, which would be unpardonable, unless he had first captured cities in her behalf. Yet amid the wildest extravagances Arabella never loses her charm. Her generosity and purity of thought make her a very lovable heroine, much more womanly than Clarissa or Sophia Western, and we do not wonder that Mr. Glanville continues to love her, although he is so often annoyed by her ridiculous fancies.

But her belief in her hallucinations is as firm as that of the Spanish Quixote for whom the book was named. Everyone will remember his attack on the windmills, which he mistook for giants. Arabella was equally brave. Thinking herself and some other ladies pursued, when the Thames cuts off their escape, she addresses her companions in language becoming one of her favourite heroines: "Once more, my fair Companions, if your honour be dear to you, if an immortal glory be worth your seeking, follow the example I shall set you, and equal, with me, the Roman Clelia." She plunged into the river, but was promptly rescued. The doctor who attended her in the illness that followed this heroic deed convinced her of the folly of trying to live according to these old books, and she consented to marry her faithful and deserving lover.

The character of Arabella is not drawn with the broad strong lines of Fielding, nor with the attention to minute detail which gives life to the characters of Richardson. But the girlish sweetness of Arabella, her refusal to believe wrong of others, her ignorance of life, her contempt for a lover who has not shed blood nor captured cities in her behalf, is a reality, and shows that the author knew the nature of the romantic girl. In the noble simplicity of Arabella, Mrs. Lennox has, perhaps unconsciously, paid a high tribute to the moral effects of the novels of Scudéri. Arabella is the only clearly drawn character in the book. But one humorous situation follows another, so that the interest never flags.

The other novels of Mrs. Lennox have no value save as they show the trend of thought of the period. In Henrietta, afterward dramatised as The Sister, the heroine, granddaughter of an earl, rather than change her religion, leaves her family and becomes the maid of a rich but vulgar tradesman's daughter. Of course her mistress, who has treated her scurrilously, in time learns her true rank and is properly humbled. The name given to one of the chapters might suffice for the most of them: "In which our heroine is in great distress."

This would seem to be the proper heading for many chapters of many books of the period. In the days of Good Queen Bess, heroines were good and happy. In the merry reign of Charles, they were bad but happy. Pamela set a fashion from which heroines seldom dared to deviate for over a hundred years. They were good—but, oh, so wretched! This type of women became such a favourite with both sexes, that even the sane-minded Scott says: