THE FEMININE NOTE 
 IN FICTION 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 The Metaphysics of J. S. Mill 
 
 Constructive Ethics 
 
 Studies New and Old 
 
 Studies at Leisure 
 
 The Idea of Tragedy 
 
 Undine: a Dream-Play 
 
 The Development of Maurice Maeterlinck 
 
THE 
 
 FEMININE NOTE 
 IN FICTION 
 
 BV 
 
 W. L. COURTNEY 
 
 » » , i 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 CHAPMAN & HALL, Ld. 
 
 1904 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 MRS. HUMPHRY WARD 3 
 
 JOHN OLIVER HOBBES 4S 
 
 LUCAS MALET . . . . . . . .87 
 
 GERTRUDE ATHERTON 115 
 
 MRS. WOODS 137 
 
 MRS. VOYNICH 159 
 
 MISS ROBINS 181 
 
 MISS MARY WILKINS ....... 199 
 
 DIARIES AND LOVE-LETTERS— 
 
 Abelard and Heloise 227 
 
 Dorothy Osborne's Love-letters . . . .234 
 
 Fanny Burney .241 
 
 Mademoiselle de Lespinasse 247 
 
 The Journal of Countess Krasinska . . .255 
 
 The Love-letters of Margaret Fuller . . 263 
 
 INDEX 273 
 
 V b 
 
 25032:? 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/femininenoteinfiOOcourrich 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 TO speak of "a feminine note in fiction" is to 
 advance a thesis which may want some defence. 
 The assumption is that when women write novels 
 they introduce a particular point of view of their own, 
 attack the problems of life from their own angle of 
 vision, and arrive at conclusions not always the same 
 as those which appeal to male novelists. To me 
 the modern history of novelistic literature seems to 
 prove that there is such a thing as a distinctive 
 feminine style in fiction, something which may be 
 good or bad or neutral, according to circumstances, 
 but, at all events, of a type peculiarly its own. Yet 
 on such a topic all general propositions are apt to 
 be fallacious, and only the broad tendencies are worth 
 much consideration. Moreover, the man who writes 
 on a subject like this must always bear in mind the 
 difficult and disconcerting fact, that if there is a 
 feminine standpoint, there is also a masculine stand- 
 point, and that the latter is as likely to lead to 
 misapprehension as the former. There is a conversa- 
 tion in Jane Austen's " Persuasion " which is singularly 
 appropriate to this discussion. Anne and Captain 
 Harville are arguing on the endless question of the 
 difference of men and women. The immediate point 
 
 vii 
 
Introduction 
 
 of controversy is the duration of emotional feeling in 
 the two sexes, but the remarks have a wider range. 
 " How shall we prove anything ? " says Captain 
 Harville. "We never shall," replies Anne. "We 
 never can expect to prove anything upon such a 
 point. It is a difference of opinion which does not 
 admit of proof. We each begin, probably, with a 
 little bias towards our own sex, and upon that bias 
 build every circumstance in favour of it which has 
 occurred within our own circle ; many of which cir- 
 cumstances, perhaps those very cases which strike us 
 the most, may be precisely such as cannot be brought 
 forward without betraying a confidence, or in some 
 respect saying what should not be said." Anne was 
 a very wise young woman, and although she, too, 
 could be dogmatic on occasions, she utters a very 
 significant warning. If only she had not a tendency 
 to be slightly oracular, one might believe in her more. 
 Sometimes she utters sentiments which would be 
 more persuasive if they were less free from ambiguity. 
 "Man," she cries, "is more robust than woman, but 
 he is not longer lived — which exactly explains my 
 view of the nature of his attachments." That is a 
 Delphic oracle that each reader may explain as he 
 will. 
 
 Let me begin by limiting the subject of discus- 
 sion. I am speaking of the modern age and modern 
 novelists. I do not desire to include every one who, 
 for whatever reason, has gained the ear of the public ; 
 I am only taking characteristic specimens. Moreover, 
 I have to deal with a class of writers who are specially 
 
 viii 
 
Introduction 
 
 imitative — that much, I hope, will be conceded to me 
 — and I have, therefore, to look at those salient and 
 originating examples which have set so many modern 
 feminine pens in motion. The decisive crises in litera- 
 ture are not very many, and are not easily discovered 
 except by succeeding generations. At the very opening 
 of the nineteenth century, Jane Austen, the youngest 
 of seven children — one other daughter was characteris- 
 tically called Cassandra, as though there were some- 
 thing in the family prophetic of the future — published 
 four novels, each one of which is in a fashion a 
 masterpiece. Probably her earliest readers had no 
 idea that she would set a particular precedent in 
 fiction ; still less that she would exhibit in striking 
 fashion precisely what a woman novelist could do 
 effectively. Nevertheless, to us, as we look back 
 over the past eighty or ninety years of literary history, 
 these four novels are seen to be one of the turning 
 points, one of the decisive moments regulating what 
 was to come after. Jane Austen has had many direct 
 imitators. Still more have been unconsciously in- 
 fluenced by her practice. Here was an educated woman 
 who, with rare self-knowledge, discovered her proper 
 place in literary work. A prosaic gentleman, called 
 Mr. Clarke, who was the librarian of the Prince 
 Regent, took advantage of the fact that she dedicated 
 " Emma " to the First Gentleman in Europe to make 
 suggestions to her of future occupations. For instance, 
 he told her that she ought to write a novel depicting 
 the habits of life and character and enthusiasms of 
 a clergyman who has passed his time between the 
 
 ix 
 
Introduction 
 
 metropolis and the country. On such a subject, he 
 added, she might rival both Goldsmith and La 
 Fontaine. Miss Austen answered that she could do 
 the comic part of such a venture, but could not com- 
 pass the literary elements. Conversations on science 
 and philosophy, quotations and allusions such as 
 should adorn the talk of a learned divine, were wholly 
 outside her province. Quite undaunted by the first 
 refusal, Mr. Clarke then proposed to Jane Austen a 
 historical romance illustrative of the august house 
 of Coburg — we must remember that at this time a 
 marriage was projected between the Princess Charlotte 
 and Prince Leopold — but the refusal was almost more 
 explicit than before. " I could not," she answered, 
 " sit seriously down to write a serious romance under 
 any other motive than to save my life, and if it were 
 indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax 
 into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure 
 I should be hung before I had finished the first 
 chapter." In other words, Jane Austen was quite 
 aware that scenes of domestic life, humorously treated, 
 with material drawn from what she actually saw 
 around her, formed the natural and predestined path 
 in which her genius could run. Her experience 
 might be limited or monotonous ; still, she was 
 sure of herself in her own department. She could 
 draw what she knew ; she could not attack big can- 
 vases or create, by sheer force of imagination, new 
 characters. 
 
 It seems to me to be a fact that a passion for 
 detail is the distinguishing mark of nearly every 
 
Introduction 
 
 female novelist. Such a limitation has its drawbacks, 
 but one must accept the defects of one's qualities. 
 Many female writers have done their best to escape 
 beyond the bounds of illuminative detail, but very few 
 have succeeded. There is Charlotte Bronte ; there 
 is also George Eliot. But even two swallows do not 
 make a summer. Observe, too, the way in which 
 each of them began. Charlotte Bronte writes a novel 
 which she called " The Professor," a transcript from 
 her own experience in a Brussels boarding school. 
 No one, I suppose, doubts that " The Professor," 
 originally called "The Master," was an idealized 
 account of Charlotte Bronte's own relation with M. 
 Heger. Or, again, George Eliot, who was so decisively 
 to prove in her own subsequent career that she could 
 transcend the narrow limits of her own individual 
 experience, wrote in i860 " The Mill on the Floss," 
 the earlier part of which is obviously autobiographical. 
 Of course, " Mr. Gilfil's Love Story " is based on an 
 Arbury episode, reminiscent, therefore, of Arbury 
 Farm near Leamington, where she was born. After- 
 wards, as I have said, both Charlotte Bronte and 
 George Eliot devised and executed novels which 
 were in the real sense creative and original. Oddly 
 enough — and it seems to prove a masculine fibre in 
 her temperament — George Eliot wrote much better 
 when she was composing dramatically than when 
 she was detailing her own thoughts in her own 
 person. Nothing, therefore, is more disappointing than 
 her correspondence. There is hardly a good letter 
 written over her own signature ; whereas there is 
 
 xi 
 
Introduction 
 
 hardly a bad speech put into the mouth of a fictive 
 character in the course of her novels. But then, 
 George Eliot's was essentially a masculine genius, 
 in no respect characteristically feminine. In other 
 words, she was an artist — an ideal which the average 
 female writer finds it very difficult to attain. The 
 passion for detail conflicts in many ways with the 
 general scope of a novel. The subordinate personages 
 are apt to be too highly coloured, the inferior in- 
 cidents are put, as it were, into the front place, and 
 therefore interfere with the proper perspective of the 
 whole. Recently complaints have been heard that 
 the novel as a work of art is disappearing and giving 
 place to monographs on given subjects, or else in- 
 dividual studies of character. If the complaint be 
 true — and in some respects it obviously is true — the 
 reason is that more and more in our modern age 
 novels are written by women for women. It would 
 be difficult, for instance, to think of any feminine 
 rival to George Meredith, in the scope and range 
 of his creative work ; still less is it possible to find 
 any feminine successor to Scott, Thackeray, and 
 Dickens. It is the neutrality of the artistic mind 
 which the female novelist seems to find it difficult to 
 realize. A great creator like Shakespeare or Dickens 
 has a wise impartiality towards all his puppets. Some- 
 times Thackeray shows a personal interest in one 
 rather than another, but he does so at the peril of 
 his own success. If a novelist take sides, he or she 
 is lost. Then we get a pamphlet, a didactic exercise 
 a problem novel— never a work of art. 
 
 xii 
 
Introduction 
 
 The female author is at once self-conscious and 
 didactic. For reasons which are tolerably clear, in 
 view of what has already been said, the beginning 
 of a woman's work is generally the writing of a 
 personal diary. In it she puts all her recollections 
 and her experiences, strongly tinctured with the 
 elements of her own personality. When she lifts 
 her eyes from the page which chronicles her own 
 life to the big world which is going on around her, 
 she instinctively takes her own view, and lets it colour 
 all that she writes. She has a particular doctrine 
 or thesis which she desires to expound, and therefore 
 A is right because he can be made the mouthpiece 
 of her own tenets, and B is wrong because he re- 
 presents the enemy. Out of the very self-consciousness 
 of the whole proceeding comes also the tendency to 
 improve the occasion. Would it be wrong to say 
 that a woman's heroine is always a glorified version 
 of herself? At a public dinner held a short time 
 ago, the toast of Literature was responded to by 
 that clever lady who calls herself John Oliver Hobbes. 
 The burden of her speech, which, indeed, was echoed 
 by Mrs. Harrison (Lucas Malet), was that the average 
 critic persisted in assuming that the women appearing 
 in her novels were bits of self-revelation. I am not 
 sure that critics assume anything of the kind, but I 
 am quite certain that the female novelists think they 
 do, and I also maintain that if critics do, they have 
 some justification. The masculine retort, however, is 
 obvious. When it came to the turn of Mr. Anthony 
 Hope to make a speech, his only comment was that he 
 
 xiii 
 
Introduction 
 
 wished that people would kindly identify his heroes with 
 himself. As a matter of fact, no one thinks of identi- 
 fying the hero of romance with the more or less dis- 
 tinguished person who describes his experiences. Great 
 as is my admiration for Mr. Anthony Hope, I should 
 never think of comparing him with Rassendyl. There 
 appears to be a certain self-consciousness in the female 
 artist, based, no doubt, on the fact that the first form 
 of her composition is, as a rule, a diary. It is absurd, 
 of course, to talk of masculine and feminine novelists ; 
 there should be no distinction of sexes among artists, 
 both high and low. Yet George Eliot clearly belongs 
 to a masculine type ; so, too, does Ouida. And could 
 any one ever mistake the sex to which belong such 
 writers as Mrs. Gaskell, George Egerton, Mona Caird, 
 Gertrude Atherton, and Mrs. Voynich ? 
 
 §2 
 
 Whatever may have been true of preceding ages, 
 it is an arguable thesis that the modern novel is 
 written by women for women. I speak, of course, of 
 the vast generality of those romances which flood the 
 bookstalls, in which the attitude, the treatment, the 
 philosophy, and, I may add, the ignorance of life are 
 all unmistakably feminine. Probably to speak of 
 " the modern woman " as though she were a separate 
 variety, is a mistake. Nevertheless, many have not 
 hesitated to do so, and, as usual, it has been left for 
 women themselves to wing the sharpest arrows 
 
 xiv 
 
Introduction 
 
 against their own sex. A short time ago, two 
 characteristic books were published, one entitled 
 "Modern Women," the other "The Psychology of 
 Woman." The authoress was a certain Madame 
 Laura Marholm Hansson, a German lady of Nor- 
 wegian extraction — in other words, possessing a 
 certain power of philosophical analysis, with that 
 superadded wildness, crudity, and fresh originality 
 which we have learned to connect with the Scandi- 
 navian genius. If ever there was a woman who was 
 entitled to give us at once a sympathetic and dis- 
 criminating account of what, half in pity and half in 
 derision, is called " the New Woman," it is Madame 
 Hansson. She has some of the homeliness and 
 simplicity of the domestic ideal belonging to the 
 Teutonic race, and yet she possesses an instinctive 
 appreciation of those brilliant failures of civilization 
 represented by Dr. Ibsen's heroines. Not many years 
 ago she married a characteristic Norwegian writer, 
 Ola Hansson, the author of " Sensitiva Amorosa," 
 and a series of prose poems called " Olfeg's Ditties," 
 which have been hailed as rare products of mystical 
 enlightenment.^ Inasmuch as she is also a literary 
 critic, possessed of an effective style, she appears to 
 have every accomplishment necessary for the pro- 
 duction of a work on " Modern Women," a series of 
 studies on the mathematician Sonia Kovalevsky, 
 George Egerton the authoress of "Keynotes," 
 Eleonora Duse, Marie Bashkirtseff, Amalie Skram, 
 and Madame Edgren-Leffler — a picturesque array 
 of names sufficiently representative of all that is 
 
 XV 
 
Introduction 
 
 strenuous, passionate, self-conscious, and false in 
 contemporary femininity. 
 
 It is an interesting book to read, but it leaves 
 on the mind an impression half of sadness, half of 
 bewilderment. The keener the criticism, the more 
 strongly do we feel the conclusion that Madame 
 Hansson has taken for her subject a transitory 
 rather than a permanent feature in our modern age. 
 She believes, in the first place, that the characters 
 she is describing represent an entirely new force, 
 whereas some of the traits may be matched from the 
 experiences of early historic epochs, and have been 
 known for years to physiologists and scientific men. 
 Her own attitude in the matter is somewhat of a 
 paradox. The ladies who have sat for her full-length 
 portraits might well complain of a critic who largely 
 believes in their ideals, but who explains to them 
 with no little iteration that they are all wrong. You 
 can tell a woman that it is not her business to attain 
 knowledge, that her life work is anything but the 
 prolonged study indulged in by the recluse and the 
 ascetic, and that if she be wise she will confine herself 
 to those gifts and graces which a benign Providence 
 ordained, let us say, in the Garden of Eden. Or else 
 you may tell her that she ought to make use of such 
 intellectual powers as she possesses, that it is the 
 simplest of all duties when you have a brain to give 
 it exercise, and that in quietness and patience, despite 
 her brother's sneers and her sister's jealousy, she must 
 seriously devote herself to the acquisition of culture 
 and self-knowledge. But what you cannot do — what 
 
 xvi 
 
Introduction 
 
 is so illogical and contradictory as to be absolutely 
 ridiculous — is to acknowledge the necessity of culti- 
 vation, and yet solemnly warn the woman of to-day 
 that she is forfeiting thereby her right place in the 
 economy of nature. Nevertheless, this is precisely 
 what Madame Hansson does in many an eloquent 
 and hortatory page. She admires her heroines, and 
 yet insists that they have mistaken their proper path 
 in life ; she feels a keen and poignant interest in the 
 creation of a literature written by women for women, 
 and yet denounces with a Delphic solemnity the 
 terrible life-mistake that is being made. It is no 
 new discovery, of course, that the eating of the fruit 
 of the Tree of Knowledge produces disillusion, or 
 that a whole range of instinctive perceptions dis- 
 appears through the formal education of the brain. 
 What else is the long historic rise of men in the 
 development of cosmic life but a relinquishment of 
 the keen senses and exquisite apprehensions of 
 animals and savages for the sake of other advantages 
 and a hoped-for ultimate gain ? If reason can only 
 reign by the obliteration of primitive instincts, how 
 can the learned woman think to retain her intuitions 
 as well as her newly won education ? 
 
 Perhaps Madame Hansson is quite aware of these 
 facts, but in that case she should have cut out of her 
 " Modern Women " all the unnecessary diatribes and 
 sermonizings. Perhaps her soul is filled with the pity 
 of it, when she sees Marie Bashkirtseff disillusioned 
 at the age of fifteen — or was it twelve ? — and Sonia 
 Kovalevsky discovering at the end of her triumphant 
 
 xvii 
 
Introduction 
 
 intellectual career that in some mysterious fashion 
 she had gained the whole world and lost her own 
 soul. But she writes as though the fatality could 
 be altered and the laws of nature softened in their 
 application, because, forsooth, the victims are women. 
 Does she imagine that the other sex, too, has not 
 gone through the same process ? Or does she think 
 it enough for one half of the creation to make dis- 
 coveries which should be rigorously interdicted to the 
 other half? It would be interesting to know whether 
 Sappho was not just such a neurotic woman as Marie 
 Bashkirtseff, and whether Madame Edgren-Leffler, 
 in her zealous advocacy of woman's rights, is not 
 repeating, with a good deal less cleverness and power 
 of thought, the conversations which Aspasia held 
 with Pericles. Long ago, the problems were attacked 
 and discussed, the only point distinguishing the con- 
 temporary age being the nerve pressure and suppressed 
 excitement produced, not only in women, but in 
 men, too, by the problems of over-population and 
 the dogmas of a relentless materialism. 
 
 The literary charm and excellence of Madame 
 Hansson's studies remain the same whatever we 
 may think of the inadequacy of her standpoint. She 
 contributes to this volume a portrait of the great 
 Italian actress, Eleonora Duse, which may, or may 
 not be absolutely correct, but which is extremely 
 interesting and suggestive. It has, perhaps, never 
 occurred to those who watched and appreciated the 
 subtle charm of Madame Duse's acting that she was 
 '* the modern woman " on the stage ; nor is the 
 
 xviii 
 
Introduction 
 
 criticism wholly complimentary to the artist. What, 
 however, is true is that in the characterizations of 
 Nora and Fedora, Sudermann's tragic heroine Magda, 
 and La Dame aux Camelias, Eleonora Duse strikes 
 certain prominent notes, in which wistfulness, sus- 
 pense, dignity, and a wide-eyed knowledge of the 
 emptiness of life seem paramount. A finer spiritual 
 susceptibility has never, probably, been exhibited on 
 the stage ; never before have we seen such waves of 
 changing emotion as chase one another over her 
 plastic and sensitive face. But, if one may say so, 
 the greater the artist within her, the less is she likely 
 to belong to a peculiar type of woman ; and I, for one, 
 can never believe, as Madame Hansson suggests, that 
 the bright, playful girl in " La Locandiera " is one of 
 Duse's failures. 
 
 Of all the studies in the book, perhaps the two best 
 are those of Marie Bashkirtseff and Sonia Kovalevsky. 
 The wild recklessness of the one contrasted with the 
 desperate seriousness of the other, both failing to 
 achieve their life's happiness, but both adding valuable 
 contributions to that kind of experience which is only 
 gained by suffering, are traced with rapid descriptive 
 touches of no little literary skill and psychological 
 acuteness. The authoress is fond of telling us that 
 "wildness" forms the main staple of the feminine 
 nature. There is, she says, " an eternal wildness, 
 an untamed, primitive savage temperament lurking 
 in the mildest and best specimens of the sex." Cer- 
 tainly this appears true of the Russian and Scan- 
 dinavian varieties, possessed alike by the consumptive 
 
 xix 
 
Introduction 
 
 girl who eventually fell in love with Bastian Lepage, 
 and that terrible Amalie Skram, who is so justly 
 styled the " woman naturalist " of Copenhagen. 
 When Madame Hansson comes to treat of the 
 English, or rather, Australian lady who writes under 
 the name of "George Egerton," her desire to force 
 her subject into a given category seems to betray 
 her. She notices with surprise that she writes like a 
 lady ; she is astonished to discover that she is capable 
 of writing '* Discords " as well as " Keynotes," and 
 a study which was evidently inspired by the first- 
 named book does not in the sequel become wholly 
 applicable to the second. There is bitterness, there 
 is discontent, there is premature disillusion in George 
 Egerton's work, just as there is in the letters of Mrs. 
 Carlyle ; but in the case both of " Keynotes " and 
 "Discords," the reader sometimes finds himself wonder- 
 ing whether all this is not a species of half-conscious 
 affectation, a trick of style, cleverly caught and 
 faithfully rendered, but not necessarily representative 
 of the whole personality. Perhaps Madame Hansson 
 would explain this by her curious judgment that of 
 all the nations of Europe, the two which are the least 
 literary are Germany and England. Yet when we 
 ultimately realize what she means — that in these two 
 countries last of all have women written books which 
 are not mere copies of men's books, but original ex- 
 pressions of themselves — we understand something 
 of Madame Hansson's literary canons. The Scandi- 
 navian element is evidently too strong in her for her 
 European culture. She seems to think that there 
 
 XX 
 
Introduction 
 
 are no such things as classical standards, and an old 
 world literary practice, but that literature was some- 
 how born again when women began to be discontented 
 and refused the matrimonial ideals of their grand- 
 mothers. 
 
 The first impression of Madame Hansson's other 
 book "The Psychology of Woman," is, it must be 
 confessed, more than a trifle disappointing ; for if we 
 can trust her, most of what man has tried to do for 
 woman, and what woman has tried to do for herself, 
 is a mistake. She traces the history in brief, succinct 
 phrases, practically from the Garden of Eden to the 
 present day. From the woman as a chattel, as the 
 squaw of the wigwam, we come to the deification of 
 the woman in mediaeval religion and mediaeval 
 romance. She was a slave ; she is now an idol ; and 
 her last state is worse than her first. For now she 
 is to be considered flawless, an etherealized creature, 
 with transparently holy impulses, whose one great and 
 capital crime is the mere suggestion that she possesses 
 a body. Then comes a reaction, and the woman with 
 perverted impulses in league with Satan is the witch 
 who must be sought out, harried, burnt, because she 
 is the potential source of all evil. Time passes on, 
 and we get to a later stage, when the woman is to 
 be regarded as bread-winner, a worker gaining her 
 own subsistence, proud, independent, clamouring to 
 have a footing in all the professions. And finally 
 comes Mrs. Laura Marholm Hansson, who tells us 
 that this latest phenomenon is absolutely a departure 
 from all truly feminine excellence. When John 
 
 xxi c 
 
Introduction 
 
 Stuart Mill offered her independence, he was the 
 worst of all those men-traitors who have ruined her 
 career, " The Emancipation of Women," says our 
 authoress, ** is nothing but woman's despair of herself 
 as woman." What a dreary cycle of revolution is 
 here ! Slave, hausfrau. Madonna, witch, rival ! And 
 the pity of it is that man has apparently been to 
 blame throughout. The last term of the period, if 
 we may accept Madame Hansson, comes perilously 
 near the first. She tells us that there is only one 
 real productivity of women, all else being moonshine 
 and nonsense. Her predominant instinct is the 
 motherly instinct. Her business is to bear children. 
 And if the hard conditions of life prevent her from 
 reaching this goal, then she must pretend to be a 
 mother, and be full of good works towards children 
 in hospitals and homes, cherishing and safeguarding 
 the homeless waifs and strays. 
 
 One can imagine, in fact, a poignant little dialogue, 
 in some modern up-to-date play, which Ibsen may yet 
 live to write, between the loosely joined husband and 
 wife, in the portrayal of whom the Scandinavian 
 drama excels. " What can I do for you ? " says the 
 male. " Would you like to be my slave ? " ^' You 
 are a brute," returns the lady. " Then will you be 
 the pinnacle of my devotion, an angel in a painted 
 window, with delightfully aesthetic colours and an 
 unmistakable aureole ? " " You forget, sir, that I am 
 a woman." " You don't wish me to consider you a 
 witch, the teterrima causa of all actual and possible 
 evil ? " " Cruel and cowardly barbarian I " says she. 
 
 xxii 
 
Introduction 
 
 " Dear me," returns the somewhat pestered husband. 
 " What can I say ? Will you have free scope for 
 rivalry? Will you go out into the highways and 
 hedges and find subsistence for yourself, pretending 
 to be a man ? " *' You know I have no chance there," 
 will be the reply. " It is just like your callous nature 
 to suggest it." Embarrassed Helmer, in this new 
 version of " The Doll's House," will at this point hold 
 up his hands in tragic despair. " Will you be simply 
 my wife ? " he says ; " the mother of my children ? " 
 And to that the average Nora — not the Nora of 
 Madame Hansson — would, I suppose, respond with a 
 gesture of infinite ennuu " That is too ineffably dull. 
 Heavens ! Am I nothing but a doll ? " The front 
 door of the house, we may be pretty sure, would 
 bang soon after that remark, not because the husband 
 intends to betake himself, in the travail of his soul, to 
 his club, but because Nora is going out into the wide 
 world to find air that she can breathe, to achieve 
 independence, to beat her wings in the void inane of 
 a universe which is not adapted to her irrepressible 
 ardour and her colossal inexperience. 
 
 I take it that Madame Hansson's book on the 
 Psychology of Woman came with a certain shock of 
 surprise to those who, in these latter days, have been 
 foremost champions of the emancipation movement, 
 because she is for ever telling them that they have 
 gone entirely on the wrong road. She is not very 
 fond of the modern man, for, so far as can be gathered, 
 he has only two characteristic varieties, the barbarian 
 or the decadent, or, as one may put it bluntly, the 
 
 xxiii 
 
Introduction 
 
 brute or the fool. But she is still less indulgent to 
 the majority of the modern representatives of her 
 own sex. She gives an ingenious classification of 
 the possible varieties of woman, not one of which is 
 quite satisfactory or praiseworthy. There are seem- 
 ingly three types — the detraqiiie^ that is to say, the 
 ill-organized woman gone off the rails ; there is the 
 ciribraky which for the sake of terseness I may be 
 pardoned for calling the " brainy " type ; and a third, 
 a little more vague, a little less defined than the 
 others, is called the grande amoureiisey the essentially 
 emotional woman, who, according to her destinies, 
 may turn out either well or ill. To the effeminate 
 and decadent man, the ditraquie is the great attrac- 
 tion, because his and her tastes are alike perverted. 
 The ordinary barbarian ought to like the amoureuse, 
 but he has not always the wit to know her when he 
 finds her. As for the ciribrale, she is the eventually 
 sexless creature, who might have been a happy 
 organizer of creches^ but who, finding no congenial 
 employment, tries to satisfy herself by increasing 
 knowledge and increasing sorrow. It would be an 
 amusing pastime for most of us to try and fit our 
 respective acquaintances into one or other of these 
 divisions. I doubt if they are exactly scientific, 
 because there runs through Madame Hansson's book 
 the general assumption that there is fundamentally 
 only one kind of woman — the woman who, she says, 
 thinks with her backbone and feels with her nerves. 
 Perhaps this is as fallacious as to suppose there is 
 only one kind of man. The three types are obviously 
 
 xxiv 
 
Introduction 
 
 only varieties of this essential female, who, because 
 she is an abstraction, has never existed at all. Madame 
 Hansson would probably dislike it if the average 
 man, somewhere between barbarian and decadent, 
 were to give his classifications of the female sex. 
 There would be the woman with a voice — harsh or 
 soft ; the woman with red hair — Titianesque or carrots ; 
 the woman with a smile — pretty or sickly ; the woman 
 with eyes — alluring or repellent ; and several other 
 pleasing and well-marked distinctions absolutely un- 
 scientific, but equally real and quite commonly referred 
 to in ordinary masculine conversation. 
 
 The value of such books as this on Woman's 
 Psychology is that they point the way to one great 
 cardinal fact in human life — that both woman and 
 man are the happier the less they try to analyze 
 their own moods. Only an infinitesimal part of 
 scientific psychology rests on self-analysis, the 
 personal equation is too misleading. We must 
 accept one of two possible ideals. If the ideal be 
 happiness, the less we think about it the better. If 
 we cannot help thinking and analyzing, we must 
 make up our minds not to be happy. The whole 
 question of female education is at present in a tran- 
 sitional stage. If I might dare to say so, men have 
 left it far too much to women to decide its character 
 for themselves, and they seem to have made a sad 
 mess of it. Moreover, women are only half educated 
 at present. For instance, they still crow over a small 
 achievement, and when they work they never betray 
 that fine, indomitable, complacent, underlying laziness 
 
 XXV 
 
Introduction 
 
 which is so beautifully exemplified in their brothers. 
 They are too strenuous ; they wear themselves out 
 with exceeding zeal. For their welfare much more 
 than for that of the male is adapted the old maxim, 
 " Point de zHe^' 
 
 § 3 
 
 The particular characteristics of the so-called 
 " Modern Woman " form a digression which may be 
 unnecessary. She, like all other more or less ex- 
 aggerated types, is after all a personified abstraction, 
 a crystallization of certain tendencies which are 
 prevalent to-day, and which have appeared here and 
 there in certain women writers. For instance, at the 
 time when problem plays and problem novels were 
 rife, one became aware that novelists like Sarah 
 Grand, Mona Caird, George Egerton, and others 
 were, it may be with a sort of studied irony, giving 
 the worst possible pictures of the lengths to which re- 
 bellious womanhood would go. Problem novels have 
 no doubt appeared over and over again in the course 
 of our literary history, but the particular kind identified 
 with these writers traced its descent, I should imagine, 
 from Thomas Hardy. Thomas Hardy has exercised 
 an influence over women writers which has not been 
 altogether fortunate. When he composed *'Tess of 
 the D'Urbervilles," he set an example which was 
 keenly followed by authors who certainly could never 
 have written works like " Far from the Madding 
 Crowd," or " The Mayor of Casterbridge." Problem 
 
 xxvi 
 
Introduction 
 
 plays and problem novels were the fashion of an 
 hour which has already passed, and we need not be 
 further concerned with their peculiarities. They had 
 unlovely characteristics which we are only too glad 
 to forget. 
 
 Modern novels, written by women, trace their 
 descent from two authors, or rather, two schools of 
 writing. From George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte 
 comes a line of novels which is altogether different in 
 character from the school, as we may phrase it, of 
 Jane Austen and Mrs. Gaskell. In the present 
 volume I have taken authors who belong to both 
 kinds of literary work, and it is a question whether 
 the greatest amount of success has not been won in 
 the second line rather than the first. It is necessary, 
 however, to distinguish the different varieties in order 
 that the respective relationships may become clear. I 
 have tried to select characteristic examples, but, like 
 ever}' other selection of the kind, my own probably 
 errs either in point of redundancy or defect. All the 
 more necessary is it to put clearly before the reader, in 
 an introduction, the classification which has been in my 
 own mind. We have, then, in the first place a series 
 of writers who, consciously or unconsciously, owe an 
 allegiance to the example set by Charlotte Bronte 
 and George Eliot. These are, as a rule, the artists of 
 the big canvas, the women who have tried to make 
 in their novels a world as full as is the big world 
 which they are studying. It requires, as we know, 
 all sorts to make a world, and the novelist who is 
 anxious to represent in her pages " the abstract and 
 
 xxvii 
 
Introduction 
 
 brief chronicles " of her time, will not be content with 
 a few clearly analyzed characters or scenes, but with 
 real life-history. Every novel is more or less a novel 
 of manners ; but for purposes of our own we will dis- 
 tinguish, under the general head of descendants of 
 George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte, two main varieties, 
 the novel of culture and the novel of realism. To the 
 novel of culture belongs the work of Mrs. Humphry 
 Ward, John Oliver Hobbes, and Lucas Malet. Mrs. 
 Humphry Ward has, perhaps, the most exalted aims 
 of any contemporary novelist. Her ambition is to 
 be another George Eliot, and, in her own fashion, 
 rival the canvases of men like Thackeray and George 
 Meredith. I speak, of course, not of her earlier but 
 of her later work, in which will be found a prodigal 
 variety of English types, both those of the village and 
 those of the centres of civilization. Her scope is 
 wider, her ambitions more artistic, perhaps, than any 
 of those with whom we have to deal, although there 
 are obvious limitations to her talent. She has both 
 wit and humour, but rarely the masculine humour. 
 She believes passionately in her own creations ; she 
 does not look at them with that cool and disinterested 
 neutrality which can be found in George Meredith 
 above all others. There is always something pedantic 
 or academic in her work, which I, at all events, am 
 far from resenting as a defect. The point becomes 
 clearer in a comparison with John Oliver Hobbes. 
 When Mrs. Humphry Ward wrote " Helbeck of 
 Bannisdale," she was dealing with those problems of 
 Catholicism which John Oliver Hobbes also delineates 
 xxviii 
 
Introduction 
 
 in "The School for Saints" and "Robert Orange." 
 " Eleanor," too, touched on the same issues, religious 
 and theological interests being, in the intention of the 
 authoress, subordinate to the human and the psycho- 
 logical. Beyond this identity of theme, however, 
 there is little enough in common between the two 
 authoresses. Mrs. Craigie (John Oliver Hobbes), 
 with her Transatlantic quickness, is the more 
 incisive, the more graphic, the more modern. Mrs. 
 Humphry Ward is leisurely, deliberate, academic. I 
 ask pardon for repeating the last term, for it seems 
 to be used in many inconsistent ways, mainly as a 
 term of reproach. To me at least, whatever else it 
 may signify, it means this, that the writer or the 
 speaker, owing either to a trained instinct, a consti- 
 tutional inability, or a fine reserve, is " unable to let 
 himself go." In this sense, Mrs. Humphry Ward is 
 academic, and for the sake of literary art many 
 readers are glad of it. The academic training is a 
 valuable lesson in reticence. Literary style, the 
 canons of which were fixed unalterably centuries ago, 
 ought to have its proper and dignified restraint, its 
 self-control, its scorn of purple patches, its innate 
 dislike of the gushing, the sentimental, the extrava- 
 gant. And, of course, it has the defects of its own 
 qualities, defects which a modern generation, thirsting 
 for striking results, is apt to exaggerate. This is the 
 age of the poster, the age also of Rudyard Kipling, 
 of M. Zola, of Miss Marie Corelli, of Mr. Hall Caine. 
 The quick effectiveness of prodigal colour naturally 
 appeals to those whose eye has not been trained to 
 
 xxix 
 
Introduction 
 
 quieter harmonies. There is also this real weakness 
 in a strict adherence to literary reserve — that it 
 always trembles on the edge of the feeble. In one 
 salient instance we have before our eyes the fate of 
 those who have a morbid conscientiousness in their 
 work — the sad case of Mr. Henry James. The scorn 
 of the obvious produces at last inertia and languor 
 in style, just as the scrupulous choice of words begets 
 ambiguity of meaning, involution of sentence, and an 
 impossibly fantastic psychology. 
 
 From these things Lucas Malet is refreshingly free. 
 She, too, has before her the idea of large canvases ; she, 
 too, understands many types. More fearless in dealing 
 with elemental facts than either Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 or Mrs. Craigie, she has either drifted into or deliber- 
 ately accepted a study of the abnormal which strains 
 the proper acceptation and meaning of literary art. 
 Mrs. Craigie is much more difficult to class. It 
 would be absurd to deny that she writes the novel of 
 culture. Yet her characters are not always con- 
 vincing. Sometimes she appears to deal with sophisti- 
 cated types, artificial creations which lack some of 
 the simpler and broader elements of our common 
 humanity. Now and again, where her interest in the 
 personified idea carries her on, her psychology is true, 
 as well as convincing — as, for instance, in "The 
 School for Saints." At other times, when inspiration, 
 for whatever reason, has left her, the artificiality is 
 more obvious, as I venture to think is the case with 
 her latest novel, " The Vineyard." She is always 
 refined and cultured, her taste is secure because it is 
 
 XXX 
 
Introduction 
 
 an educated taste. And yet it would seem that 
 every authoress must always come back to mother 
 earth, to bathe herself once more in the primitive 
 springs of life. For, however one may phrase it, 
 culture is artificial, unless by some magnificent stroke 
 of genius we get to the higher artifice and creative 
 work of a Shakespeare, with the pregnant motto — 
 " Over that art which you say adds to Nature is an 
 art which Nature makes." What John Oliver Hobbes 
 has tried to do is to be a female Meredith. Possibly 
 she might have been better advised if she had essayed 
 to be a twentieth-century Jane Austen. 
 
 Next to the novel of culture comes the novel of 
 realism, in which the desire is to get as close to nature 
 as possible, both in her uglier and her fairer types, to 
 be true to life, whatever life may contain of the re- 
 pulsive or the sweet. There are many ways in which 
 this effort can be realized. You may take simple, 
 elemental types. Mrs. Woods has done this in "A 
 Village Tragedy." The writer who calls herself 
 " Zack " has done it in " On Trial " and " The White 
 Cottage." Or you may achieve the same result by a 
 fearless analysis very often of morbid moods, so that 
 you get what may be called the pathological novel, 
 as instanced in the work of Mrs. Voynich. Gertrude 
 Atherton's work is also singularly outspoken, although 
 it would hardly be just to class her otherwise than 
 amongst those who essay to be artists in the widest 
 sense, taking all elements of life as their province. 
 A third device of realism is to get into the open air, 
 a fashion which Rudyard Kipling may be said to 
 
 xxxi 
 
Introduction 
 
 have illustrated, and which Miss Elizabeth Robins 
 adopted when she wrote "The Magnetic North." 
 Novels of culture, novels of realism, out-of-doors 
 novels, pathological novels — such are some of the 
 different modes in which the artistic impulse derived 
 from George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte has worked 
 itself out in our present generation. But the true 
 feminine successes have been won by adopting other 
 processes and modes of work. The feminine intellect 
 has a passion for detail ; that is a quality which 
 belongs to all the best work done by female writers. 
 Miss Austen's immortal novels are the first definite 
 indication of what can be done by an acute feminine 
 intellect, working along congenial paths ; and that 
 is why I call her books a turning-point in literary 
 history. 
 
 After Miss Austen herself, there are others who 
 have gained success by similar powers of minute 
 observation applied to the immediate scenes around 
 them. Miss Mitford will always be remembered as 
 the authoress of "Our Village;" Mrs. Gaskell is 
 famous because she wrote that masterpiece of quiet 
 observation which she called " Cranford." Those 
 who have worked in the spirit of Miss Austen have 
 written, of course, novels of manners ; but they have 
 chosen, for the most part, small canvases and limited 
 themselves to those types of character which they 
 could reproduce through experience, and not create 
 through some active exercise of imagination. As 
 women are happiest when they reproduce, as they 
 are least happy when they create, in literature, we 
 xxxii 
 
Introduction 
 
 obtain along this line of work some of the best 
 things which women have done in our generation. 
 For instance, take one or two sub-varieties. There 
 is the miniature or genre novel, of which the most 
 brilliant example is the work of Miss Wilkins. Or 
 there is the psychological novel, the feminine 
 counterpart of the novels we associate with Mr. 
 Henry James. Mrs. Wharton, although no one 
 could describe her as a great novelist, has done 
 exceedingly good work in this line. It is true that 
 she wrote "The Valley of Decision," and the book 
 gave us a wonderful picture of an earlier Italy. 
 But the moving procession of pictures passed too 
 quickly to arrest our attention, and Mrs. Wharton's 
 real gifts lie in the psychological, and not in the 
 historical sphere. What is her chief concern } Un- 
 doubtedly the problems of the spiritual life, the 
 phenomena of psychic influence, as in " A Gift from 
 the Grave." When Mrs. Wharton concentrates her- 
 self upon the mutual relations between individuals, 
 she succeeds in bringing the essential elements of 
 the situation into the boldest and strongest relief. 
 Take, for instance, the little book she calls "Sanc- 
 tuary." Here we have a particular problem stated 
 with the utmost simplicity, with an utter disregard 
 of all that is unessential — a powerful bit of work, 
 because Mrs. Wharton has kept herself rigidly to 
 what she can do so well. Kate Orme and Denis 
 Peyton are engaged. Kate discovers that, through 
 weakness, Denis has been led to do a dishonourable 
 thing. It is irreparable, there is no one to make 
 xxxiii 
 
Introduction 
 
 amends to, and her impulsive entreaty to him to 
 make open confession is simply not understood 
 either by him or by any of his world. At first she 
 recoils from the thought of marrying him ; then " in a 
 wild passion of spiritual motherhood " she conceives 
 the idea of saving, if not Denis, then at least that 
 child of his which will surely be born, if not of her, 
 then of some other woman, to whom he will not tell 
 the truth. The years pass. Denis is dead, and Kate 
 has devoted her life to Dick, her son and his. Dick 
 is grown up, and to him in a moment of weakness 
 comes a supreme temptation to dishonour. Kate 
 agonizes in silence. Her boy must fight his battle 
 alone, she thinks, but unknown to herself her silent 
 influence is with him all through, and just because 
 she respects the supreme right of a soul to be left 
 alone, the good triumphs at the very moment when 
 it seemed as if the boy would go under. It all sounds 
 little in the telling, but the spiritual conflict is realized 
 with an emotional force of imagination which makes 
 the story " actual " as no amount of detailed incident 
 could make it. It is very short, only two hundred 
 widely printed pages, and it introduces scarcely more 
 than half a dozen characters. Yet it will live in the 
 reader's memory, while the majority of contemporary 
 novels are only too rapidly forgotten. 
 
 There are many other instances of the same kind 
 of work, but I need not weary the reader with a 
 string of names. Sara Jeanette Duncan is an 
 obvious example of similar gifts. But from what has 
 already been said, one conclusion, at all events, is 
 xxxiv 
 
Introduction 
 
 clear. In this close, analytic miniature-work women- 
 writers are at least the equal of, if they are not 
 superior to, their masculine rivals. But in the former 
 class, where the artist works on a large canvas 
 and has to create, women are generally inferior. In 
 the first place, their range of knowledge is less, 
 except in rare individual cases like that of George 
 Eliot and George Sand. In the next place, the genius 
 for detail conflicts with the artistic impulse which 
 has to keep every incident and character subject to 
 the main idea of the novel. In the work of women, 
 the smaller characters often seem to have an impor- 
 tance which should, of course, be preserved for the 
 personages set in high lights — the hero and the 
 heroine. 
 
 Some kinds of sentiment are at a discount in our 
 modern age, and the sentimental novel, as our fore- 
 fathers understood the term, is hardly popular. 
 Successors to Richardson and Fanny Burney are 
 certainly not prevalent. There are very few modern 
 instances of the really sentimental novel. Perhaps 
 Mrs. Fuller Maitland affords the best example. But 
 there has been a distinct cult for the epistolary dis- 
 cursive style, the charm of which depends entirely on 
 the personality of the writer. As I have already said, 
 the diary is the first form of literary composition 
 for the majority of women- writers. " Elizabeth and 
 her German Garden " is a characteristic instance of the 
 epistolary discursive style. Yet, as it seems to me, 
 novels of this kind are generally inferior in vivid- 
 ness and reality to the actual letters — especially to 
 
 XXXV 
 
Introduction 
 
 love-letters. It is for this reason that I have added 
 at the end of this book some examples of love- 
 letters. Those of Dorothy Osborne need no fresh 
 recommendation ; while the letters of Mademoiselle 
 de Lespinasse have the added interest that they 
 suggested a theme to Mrs. Humphry Ward, in 
 " Lady Rose's Daughter." 
 
 September^ 1904. 
 
 *^* Some of the following studies are based on articles contributed 
 to The Daily Telegraphy and I have to thank the Proprietors for allow- 
 ing me to make use of them. But these have been largely re-written, 
 while others now appear for the first time. 
 
 XXXVl 
 
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 12, line 9 : for " from sympathies " read "from our sympathies ". 
 ,, 128, „ 2 from bottom : for " book which has " read " books which 
 
 have". 
 „ 218, „ 2 :/^r "or" mz</ "on". 
 „ 255, ,, 7 from bottom : for " Bashkistseff " read ** Bashkirtseft'". 
 
 The Feminine Note jn Ficj 
 
lUUWUCUuu 
 
 It ii Cor this rotiOD that Iiave added 
 cf Ihii book tooo exampli of love- 
 of Dofolkx Oiborne oed no fresh 
 vhat tho kttofs of MdemoiseUe 
 tho addod intacs that they 
 O OMM lo Mm Hoinphr} Ward, in 
 
 V 
 
 fcvaUov- 
 kclv re-written. 
 
 xnvi 
 
IRS. HUMPHRY WARD 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 12, ling : for ** from sympathies " read " from our sympathies ". 
 „ 128, „2 from bottom : for '* book which has " nad ** books which 
 
 have". 
 „ 218, „ 2 : for " or " read '• on ". 
 .1 255, ,,7 from lx)ttom : for " Bashkistscflf " read ** Bashkirtseflf ". 
 
 Thk Feminine ^TB in Fiction. 
 
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD 
 
 § I 
 
 THERE were many reasons for the remark- 
 able vogue which " Robert Elsmere " obtained 
 not closely connected with its literary or artistic 
 merits. But the fact of its success was as indisputable 
 as the celebrity which its authoress, Mrs. Humphry 
 Ward, acquired. It will be remembered that Mr. 
 Gladstone gave the book his solemn "imprimatur" 
 by writing a long and closely reasoned refutation of 
 its main tenets ; the American public, almost more 
 ready than ourselves to accept whatever seems either 
 in style or manner to depart from old-established 
 paths, received it with open arms ; while the final 
 consecration of its triumph was reached when a hall 
 was established in order to win over proselytes to 
 its views. " Elsmerism " became for the time the 
 fashionable doctrine of the day — not, it may be 
 suspected, because most people were aware of its 
 real import, but because it had a pleasant flavour 
 of something which was thought to be piquantly 
 unorthodox. The truth, however, was that the book 
 had the singular merit of being attractive to very 
 different tastes and divergent types of intelligence. 
 The agnostics liked it because its hero had deserted 
 
 3 B 2 
 
The Femmine Note in Fiction 
 
 the religion of his fathers ; the religious world felt 
 their sympathies warmly stirred when they found 
 that Elsmere ended with a distinctly emotional 
 creed ; while the great body of thoughtful readers 
 were interested in its metaphysical discussions, and 
 felt in some vague way that the tragedy of the 
 clergyman deserting his orders was one which, in 
 different forms, was going on all round them. For 
 these, or for other reasons — not excluding the 
 patronage of the Liberal leader — the book became 
 the fashion, and not to have a conversational 
 acquaintance with its contents was the mark of the 
 illiterate and Philistine mind. Critics might point 
 out its crudities or its faults. They might argue 
 that Robert Elsmere ought to have studied the laws 
 of evidence while he was yet a candidate for honours 
 in the final schools of Oxford, or they might speak 
 of the absurdity of a country squire masquerading 
 in the garb of a Mephistopheles. Such points, how- 
 ever, were too recondite for the public at large. 
 They discovered for themselves that the novel was 
 well written, daring, and unconventional ; that it 
 showed much power in the delineation of character, 
 and that the descriptions of scenery were in every 
 way charming. 
 
 In " David Grieve " the same picturesque elements 
 reappear. We start with a inise-en-scHe which in 
 its way is masterly. " Some distance away, beyond 
 the undulating heather ground, rose a magnificent 
 curving front of moor, steep sides of it crowned 
 with black edges and cliffs of grit, the outline of 
 
 4 
 
Mrs* Humphry Ward 
 
 the south-western end sweeping finely up on the 
 right to a purple peak, the king of all the moorland 
 round. No such colour as clothed that bronzed 
 and reddish wall of rock, heather, and bilberry is 
 known to Westmoreland, hardly to Scotland : it 
 seems to be the peculiar property of that lonely and 
 inaccessible district which marks the mountainous 
 centre of mid-England." We may or may not, 
 according to our tastes, like to read a careful analysis 
 of an awakening human soul ; but few of those who 
 love their country are unresponsive to the charms of 
 one of its most characteristic landscapes. 
 
 Though in a sense it is complementary to the 
 earlier novel, " David Grieve " is a study of a some- 
 what different kind. No doubt what ought to be 
 clearly shown by any one who, like Mrs. Ward, is 
 preaching a new evangel, is that the satisfaction 
 which she is prepared to give to perturbed minds is 
 one sufficiently catholic to suit intellects of very 
 varied calibre. Let it be granted that a highly 
 educated man, finding the orders which he has so 
 rashly assumed a cramping burden to his awakened 
 intelligence, may seek and ultimately discover peace 
 in a humanitarian doctrine which is full of the 
 Christian spirit without being encumbered with 
 Christian dogmas. We still wish to know whether 
 the Nirvana of educated dissent may prove a heaven 
 for the coarsely vigorous sceptic. This, if we under- 
 stand it aright, is the sort of problem with which Mrs. 
 Ward resolutely desired to grapple. David Grieve 
 is born in a lowly station — the son of a labourer in 
 
 5 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 the " mountainous centre of mid-England." After a 
 stormy youth he passes, in the second division of the 
 novel, to Manchester, with results to his inchoate 
 religious moods which can easily be surmised. Then 
 follow more storms, and the struggles, both social and 
 mental, which are the prelude of a new awakening. 
 The hero marries, and, of course, marries the wrong 
 woman. Temptations follow — temptations such as 
 "a most disappointing marriage" — the words are 
 David Grieve's — will naturally bring to one who is 
 sensitive and affectionate. On one occasion the wife 
 herself questions her husband as to a friendship he 
 had formed other than her own. "You and she 
 thought that marrying didn't matter at all when 
 people loved each other — that nobody had a right to 
 interfere .? Do you think that now, David ? " " No," 
 he said, with deep emphasis ; " no, I have come to 
 think the most disappointing and hopeless marriage, 
 nobly borne, to be better worth having than what 
 people call an ideal passion." Thus David Grieve 
 comes to his better mind, and the change in his 
 views of social relations, of "those fundamental rules 
 which poor human nature has worked out for the 
 protection and help of its own weakness," corresponds 
 with the dawning of a religious creed. One of the 
 agents of his reform is a Mr. Ancrum, who meets us 
 early in the book, and whose influence lasts to the 
 end. It is largely owing to him that David Grieve, 
 at the close of his life's history, finds the Divine voice 
 clear to him, and Divine Fatherhood real. 
 
 It is possible, however, that some hardy critic 
 6 
 
Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 
 might suggest that David Grieve is an exceptional 
 character, and that the catholic nature of Mrs. Ward's 
 spiritualistic creed is hardly proved by the history 
 of his conversion. Certainly the hero is somewhat 
 out of the common. For his agricultural youth he 
 is recommended to read " Shirley " and " Nicholas 
 Nickleby " ; in his early Manchester period we find 
 him quoting Benjamin Franklin and the Vegetarian 
 NewSy while at a later epoch he is nothing short of a 
 philosopher. Listen to him giving the rationale of 
 his abandonment of scepticism. " He had long ceased 
 to find any sustenance or pleasure in the Secularist 
 literature which had once convinced him so easily. 
 Secularism up to a certain point, it began to seem to 
 him, was commonplace ; beyond that point a con- 
 tradiction. Nothing can be more certain than that 
 some of the finest powers and noblest work of the 
 human mind have been developed by the struggle to 
 know what the Secularist declares is neither know- 
 able nor worth knowing." Whereupon he turns to 
 Bishop Berkeley, and, " with a devouring energy which 
 never flagged," masters the most difficult and intricate 
 metaphysics of the blameless prelate whose tenets as 
 to matter so much offended Dr. Johnson. Not quite 
 an ordinary being this David Grieve, nor yet one who 
 can justly be held up as an example to our agnostic 
 artisans. Perhaps we may be pardoned if we describe 
 such ethereal doctrines as only fitted for the elect of 
 humanity, and not, like commonplace Christianity, 
 a Gospel preached to the poor. After all, however, 
 whether or no the didactic elements are intended to 
 
 7 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 be emphasized, no one can fail to be interested in 
 Mrs. Ward's hero, or the record of the storm and 
 stress through which his bark sailed into peaceful 
 waters. 
 
 §2 
 
 Certainly there is no lack of *' reality" in the 
 problems which Mrs. Humphry Ward discusses. 
 If it be the business of a writer of romances to 
 present a moving picture of the times in which we 
 live, to weave a web of all the various threads of 
 contemporary interest which are to be found in 
 our social structure, and to gather into a number 
 of illustrative scenes the thoughts and questions 
 which are agitating our time, then it can hardly 
 be denied that the authoress has fulfilled her 
 self-imposed duty with admirable assiduity. In 
 " Marcella " we have a study of Socialism. The 
 heroine herself is a Socialist, and she is brought into 
 contact with wealthy landowners and demagogues, 
 with apostles of the most advanced and insistent 
 type, with leaders of labour, both honest and selfish, 
 with village politics of the kind which are likely to 
 prove attractive to future parish councils, with game- 
 keepers who get shot, and poachers who are hung, 
 and, above all, with the harassing incidents of that 
 period of transition between a decaying oligarchy 
 and a rapidly advancing democracy which is the 
 characteristic aspect of latter-day England. Yet these 
 
 8 
 
Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 
 varied topics are not presented as a dramatist would 
 paint them, but from the point of view rather of a 
 thinker and a philosopher. 
 
 Scenes full of dramatic force are somewhat 
 rare in the book, which is, for the most part, 
 occupied with discussions and analyses of feelings, 
 sentiments, and moods. Page after page we find 
 ourselves immersed in disquisitions as to character 
 and motives which, in the hands of a George Eliot, 
 have ere now had power to rouse us, but which re- 
 quire for their successful management a psychological 
 acumen and mastery which the authoress has by no 
 means acquired. It is no light reading, this novel ; 
 there is none of the quality of the " literary anodyne " 
 about it ; on the contrary, the action moves too often 
 heavily and slowly, and we are left with the im- 
 pression rather of a toilsome exercise most conscien- 
 tiously gone through than of a brilliant study of life 
 and manners. Yet once again the authoress shows, 
 as she has proved before both in " Robert Elsmere " 
 and in " The History of David Grieve," that her hand 
 has much of the painter's cunning. It seems a pity 
 that a touch so true and firm with Nature should 
 falter, in, wandering mazes lost, amid the mist of 
 Socialistic controversy. 
 
 " Marcella " is the life-history of a vivacious and 
 high-spirited girl. From first to last her chief trait 
 is her independence, which, as it is found combined 
 with a nimble art and much intellectual quickness and 
 receptivity, often forces her into strange and unreal 
 positions. When the story opens she is a girl at 
 
 9 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 a boarding-school — black-haired, bright-eyed, and 
 generally rebellious ; then she works by herself in 
 the Kensington Art Schools, and becomes converted 
 to Socialism by two prominent members of the so- 
 called "Venturist Society," which is Mrs. Ward's 
 name for a community of progressive thinkers. With 
 her head full of crude notions as to the iniquities of 
 the Game Laws and of aristocratic landlords, she is 
 transferred to a small village in the country, and, by 
 the irony of fate, becomes engaged to Mr. Aldous 
 Raeburn, who is going to be the future Lord Max- 
 well, and is the owner of numerous acres. With 
 charming inconsistency she reconciles herself to this 
 flat negation of her principles by picturing what she 
 will do to help the poor, when she can, with lavish 
 hand, play the part of a Lady Bountiful. Nemesis, 
 however, is not so easily propitiated. She comes 
 under the influence of a brilliant young demagogue, 
 who combines the gifts of a Catiline with some of 
 the plausibility and glibness of a modern tribune of 
 the people. This man, Harry Wharton, is, as the 
 authoress is at no pains to conceal, a charlatan and a 
 humbug, but he has sufficiently persuasive claims to 
 captivate the ardent imagination of Marcella, and, in 
 the central incident of the book, manages so far to 
 compromise the heroine as to lead to a rupture of 
 her engagement with Aldous Raeburn. Thence 
 begins for Marcella the long upward climb to in- 
 tellectual sanity, and a proper appreciation both of 
 sociology and of character. Her period of probation 
 begins in an hospital, in direct and immediate contact 
 
 10 
 
Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 
 with a stern discipline in which she has to learn to 
 obey. The discovery that Mr. Wharton is not quite 
 so sincere as she originally thought him, and that 
 even her Venturist friends have not all the truth and 
 justice on their side, leads to the inevitable denone- 
 menty when she once more throws herself into 
 Raeburn's arms, and, with new-born humility, accepts 
 his guidance for her future career. 
 
 It is hardly an artistic novel ; the value of the 
 details is greater than the value of the whole. The 
 first volume is occupied with the crudely apostolic 
 ardour of the heroine as a Socialist ; the second gives 
 us most of the dramatic and interesting incidents in 
 her evolution ; the third is a somewhat wearisome 
 history of her gradual conversion, which, be it re- 
 membered, is due to nothing but an experience of a 
 nurse's life, and of some of the artisans' dwellings in 
 London. The tale is not a unity, in which every 
 part contributes to the completed perfection, but 
 an edifice slowly built up in successive stories and 
 platforms, in which the scaffolding, so to speak, is 
 as conspicuous as the house. What remains in the 
 memory is not the completed and finished story, but 
 the portraits, the characters, the few striking events. 
 
 Perhaps it is more in the delineation of the sub- 
 ordinate characters than in that of the heroine that we 
 feel the heavy hand of the didactic moralist. Harry 
 Wharton is, of course, intended to be a type, for we 
 can hardly do Mrs. Ward the injustice of supposing 
 that she is consciously painting a contemporary por- 
 trait. The old Lord Maxwell is equally a type of 
 
 II 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 the aristocrat of an ancient and dignified kind. The 
 case is the same with the fervent apostles of the 
 Venturist Society, Louis and Anthony Raven. In 
 other personages we miss the decisive touches 
 which could render them real. Marcella's father is 
 only faintly sketched in, although he might easily 
 have become a dramatically valuable character. Even 
 the hero, Aldous Raeburn, is made to stand some- 
 what aloof from sympathies, every now and then 
 coming dangerously near to pedantry. On the other 
 hand, Marcella's mother, Mrs. Boyce, is quite one of 
 the most successful creations; and the young idealist, 
 with a tendency to consumption, and the rare and 
 exalted instincts of the true reformer — Edward 
 Hallin — is at once sympathetic and interesting. Still 
 it is, of course, by Marcella herself that the book 
 must stand or fall. 
 
 §3 
 
 There is a prejudice, not wholly unreasonable, 
 and resting on notable examples in literature, 
 against sequels. It was not wise of Defoe to write a 
 continuation of " Robinson Crusoe " ; it was a little 
 rash, perhaps, for Anthony Hope to open once more 
 the romantic annals of *' Ruritania " ; and if we ask 
 for higher examples, " Paradise Regained " cuts but 
 a poor figure beside " Paradise Lost." Nevertheless, 
 there are well-known instances to the contrary, and 
 amongst them must undoubtedly be placed the sequel 
 
 12 
 
Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 
 which Mrs. Humphry Ward wrote to "Marcella." 
 The Marcella of the earlier work, with her wild 
 Socialistic aspirations, her changeable temper, her 
 grave seriousness and her alternate attraction towards 
 and repulsion from Aldous Raeburn, was at once 
 a passionate enthusiast and a lovable woman. But 
 when her subsequent fortunes are told us in the pages 
 of " Sir George Tressady," her character seems to ' 
 widen its boundaries, and is lifted to higher con- 
 ceptions, not only of political faith, but of wifely 
 duty. Aldous Raeburn is now an important member 
 of a Conservative Administration, as Lord Maxwell, 
 while Marcella, as Lady Maxwell, retaining that 
 divine pity for suffering which was at the bottom 
 of all her follies and successes, is the stately hostess 
 of an extremely modern and contemporary salon. 
 With an influence like hers beside him, it was not 
 likely that the peer who directed the social pro- 
 gramme of the Government should be otherwise 
 than a friend to labour, an ally of trade unionists, 
 a man whom both friends and enemies alike never 
 failed to respect, even when they hinted at his 
 dangerously Communistic tendencies. Marcella is, 
 of course, the life and soul of the movement which 
 is at last to do justice to the working classes, and 
 every one throughout England is supposed to 
 recognize that though the reforming hands are 
 those of a liberal and enlightened Esau in the 
 Upper House, the voice, the inspiring voice which 
 wins its way in spite of conscientious and bigoted 
 opposition, is that of a Jacob, sometimes hastily 
 
 13 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 styled a supplanter, but in reality the sweetest 
 woman in the three kingdoms. 
 
 It is, then, through the pages of a political novel 
 that the reader makes his way in " Sir George 
 Tressady.** From first to last we hear the mutter- 
 ings of the discontented, the fierce revolt against the 
 conditions of white slavery, which are at the bottom 
 of the reforming and humanistic conceptions of the 
 time. The battle is being fought out before our eyes 
 between Conservatives who take up the cause of 
 labour and old-fashioned Liberals who have become 
 afraid of the all-embracing grasp of trade unionism. 
 Two conceptions of liberty are arrayed for combat in 
 Mrs. Humphry Ward's arena — the liberty of the 
 individual who claims for himself the right to work as 
 he will, to overtax his powers if need be, to spend his 
 energies in overtime labour, because mouths have to be 
 fed and the hungry brood of children sustained ; and 
 the other, the Socialistic notion of the freedom gained 
 for the working classes, not by individual effort, but 
 by co-operation, the freedom of the labourer which 
 says to society at large, " You must protect me from 
 excessive work ; you must bring the Parliamentary 
 machine to the aid of the harassed women, children, 
 and even adults by the limitation of hours of labour, 
 and the rigid rules of factory inspection." Mrs. 
 Ward's novel is full of arguments like these, wholly 
 preoccupied with the insistent social problems whose 
 solutions will either make or mar the modern industrial 
 England, discussing such questions on every page, 
 figuring and transforming them, not in the style of 
 
Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 
 the economist, or according to the methods of the 
 Blue Book, but as factors in a dramatic presentation 
 of character. Sometimes, especially in the earlier 
 portion of the book, this background of economic y 
 science seems to overwhelm the personal and artistic 
 elements of the story. Then when we reach the 
 crisis of the tale the background recedes and leaves 
 in clear light the living men and women whose history 
 is slowly evolved before us. If Marcella is above all 
 a political Egeria, if she is one of those modern 
 women who work in the East End and are never 
 happy without a district and a pied-d-terre in the 
 Commercial Road, she is also a very human being, a 
 wife who adores her husband, a splendidly beautiful 
 personality, whose individual fascination makes 
 wider conquests than her philosophical arguments. 
 
 Sir George Tressady is one of those who come 
 within the circle of her influence, and is in conse- 
 quence born to a new world. At the opening of the 
 story he is the ordinary squire, who owns mines, who 
 believes in the rights of property, and has very strong 
 views about the increasing democratization of the 
 country. He has married a pretty, commonplace 
 girl, Letty Sewell, for no other reasons than those 
 which naturally influence a man tempted by a piquant 
 face and a laughing petulance of manner. He goes 
 into Parliament as the avowed supporter of a group 
 opposed to Lord Maxwell, a group which is com- 
 manded and organized by a hard-headed, resolute, 
 domineering chief. Lord Fontenoy. To such a man, 
 sentimentalism in politics is a deplorable weakness, 
 
 15 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 the dominion of a petticoat an open scandal. That 
 Lady Maxwell, at a crisis in her country's fate, should 
 inspire some new regulations with regard to labour 
 seems an intolerable intrusion into the masculine 
 domain, a mournful instance of the impertinent rest- 
 lessness of the "eternal feminine." But she is no 
 ordinary Egeria, this Marcella Maxwell, who had 
 given herself heart and soul to the cause of labour. 
 She is not a platform woman to begin with, for she 
 found it difficult to make formal orations, and on the 
 one occasion when she tried to address a meeting in 
 the East End she was an undisguised failure. The 
 secret of her charm did not lie in her political 
 abilities ; it was something that belonged to her 
 feminine essence, the rich feeling which accepted 
 every human sorrow as her own, the shrinking, 
 sensitive organization which could not bear to think 
 of all that dim underground of hopeless and creedless 
 toil on which modern civilization is built. In the 
 delineation of her heroine Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 holds the balance truly. If she paints the charm of 
 her Marcella, she also understands and interprets the 
 outspoken, instinctive dislike which most men feel 
 towards the female politician ; if she makes us fall in 
 love with her, she suggests also the faults and weak- 
 nesses of her career. When Marcella handles social 
 problems, she sees them only on their emotional 
 side ; to her they are to be solved, not in terms of the 
 intellect, but in terms of feeling. "For me," she 
 cries, in one of numerous passages to this effect, " the 
 real making of one's country is done out of sight, in 
 
 16 
 
Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 
 garrets, and workshops, and coalpits, by people who 
 die every minute — forgotten — swept into heaps like 
 autumn leaves, their lives mere soil and foothold for 
 the generation that comes after them." And as Sir 
 George Tressady, increasingly drawn by the mag- 
 netism of her nature, looks at her trying to explain 
 herself to a meeting of workpeople, he knows quite 
 well that the appeal she makes to him is not that of 
 the economist or the reformer, but of something 
 more tender, more intimate, more personal. "He 
 felt the woman's heart oppressed with a pity too 
 great for it ; the delicate, trembling consciousness, 
 like a point in space, weighed on by the burden of 
 the world ; he stood, as it were, beside her, bearing 
 with her the earth-spectacle as she saw it, with that 
 terrible second-sight of hers ; the all-environing woe 
 and tragedy of human things — the creeping hunger 
 and pain — the struggle that leads no whither — the 
 life that hates to live and yet dreads to die — the 
 death that cuts all short, and does but add one more 
 hideous question to the great pile that hems the path 
 of man." 
 
 Of course one knows — and that is a second limi- 
 tation of Marcella's political virtue — what will be the 
 issue of this increasing fascination that is making an 
 apostate of Sir George Tressady. The climax comes 
 when he votes against Lord Fontenoy and his party 
 and takes sides, for good or for ill, with Lord Maxwell 
 and the Government. He cannot, however, disguise 
 from himself, nor does he fail to explain to her, the 
 reasons for this tergiversation. It is not the goodness 
 
 17 c 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 of her cause, it is the woman who captivates him. In 
 his limited life had come the vision of a larger love, 
 a reverence, an adoration for something hitherto 
 beyond his horizons. " I did it for you," he explains 
 to Marcella, in a vivid scene full of reticent dramatic 
 strength ; " I had given up my judgment to yours ; I 
 had simply come to think that what you wished was 
 good. A force I no longer questioned drove me to 
 you, to your end. That was the whole secret of last 
 night ; the rest was only means to a goal." Such a 
 confession, coming at a moment when Lady Maxwell 
 was thrilling with the triumph of her husband, struck 
 her as the most bewildering criticism, the most 
 appalling rebuke to her proselytizing tendency. She 
 had seemingly spoilt this man's life ; she had, at all 
 events, done the deadliest injury to Sir George 
 Tressady's wife — poor little undeveloped, worldly and 
 commonplace Letty. Yet even from this imminent 
 tragedy of ruin the hero escapes, albeit as by fire. 
 Marcella once more is his good angel — Marcella no 
 longer as the prophetess pointing out to him his 
 political path, but rather as an angel of healing and 
 consolation, a Romola whose mission was to save and 
 not destroy. Like Romola visiting Tito's peasant wife, 
 Tessa, she, too, visits Letty, and wins her over by the 
 irresistible art of her nobility and innocence. Slowly 
 and painfully Sir George Tressady and the neglected, 
 frivolous wife, who has meanwhile been gaining a 
 doubtful consolation by a flirtation with a dissolute 
 Lord Cathedine, seek and find reconciliation. But 
 the man who has been through such sombre valleys 
 
 i8 
 
Mrs* Humphry Ward 
 
 of disillusionment and regret could never remain 
 what he once was — a country squire, a callous owner 
 of mines. A severe struggle between the workers 
 and their employers, a strike which has reduced the 
 neighbourhood almost to beggary, ends in a victory 
 for the capitalists ; but Sir George Tressady could 
 feel no joy in a success like this. He is already more 
 than half on the side of the miners, thanks to the 
 past teaching of Marcella, and when the news comes 
 of a terrible explosion of firedamp he forms one of 
 an eager party of rescue, and finds a gallant death 
 in some of the lowest galleries. Thus the finishing 
 stroke is put to his career, the crowning testimony 
 given to that potent force which had changed all the 
 currents of his life, which had given him newer hopes 
 and wider ideas, and finally inspired him to win a 
 hero's death. 
 
 This is the story of human passion which Mrs. 
 Humphry Ward paints on the background of 
 her economic speculations and theories. It is 
 worked with such fine fervour towards its close, it so 
 carries away its reader in pity and fear to its final 
 denouement that all other characters seem to fall 
 away, and we are left only with Marcella and Sir 
 George Tressady. Nevertheless, there are many 
 portraits of unquestionable force and vigour scattered 
 through these chapters — Lord Fontenoy, for instance, 
 also with his Egeria behind him, white-haired Mrs. 
 Alison ; Bennet, the working-man's candidate in Par- 
 liament ; Valentine Bewick, the trade unionist leader, 
 to say nothing of Lord Maxwell, the grave, tired, 
 
 i9 
 
 X 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 hard-working minister; Lady Tressady, George's 
 mother, a withered, irresponsible being, full of faded 
 airs of juvenility ; and Letty, who serves as an ad- 
 mirable foil to Marcella's spiritual grace. There is 
 less in this volume of the skilful landscape drawing 
 with which hitherto Mrs. Ward has made us familiar ; 
 but en revanche^ there is a stronger grasp of situations, 
 a more incisive analysis of character. If Marcella 
 claims her creator's greatest and most loving elabo- 
 ration, there is no less truth and reality in the portrait 
 of the giddy, empty-headed mondaine who is slowly 
 educated to become a less unworthy wife to Sir 
 George Tressady. " I'll tell you what it is," says one 
 of her critics, in the earlier portion of the tale, " I'll 
 tell you what it is — she isn't a gentleman! Don't 
 interrupt me ! I mean exactly what I say — she isn't 
 a gentleman. She would do and say all the things 
 that a nice man squirms at. I always have the oddest 
 fancy about that kind of person. I see them as they 
 must be at night — all the fine clothes gone — just a 
 little black soul scrawled between the bedclothes ! " 
 An unkind and far too petulant description, no 
 doubt, but pages of analysis could not give us a 
 keener consciousness of Letty's original defects. 
 
 §4 
 
 " The Story of Bessie Costrell " was, so far as I 
 am aware, Mrs. Humphry Ward's first experiment 
 in a short story. The study of her earlier novels, 
 
 20 
 
Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 
 made it clear that, however good her characterization 
 was in all spheres of life, she seemed to have an 
 especial skill in the portraiture of her villagers — in 
 this, as in many points, following the model of George 
 Eliot. It also became clear that Mrs. Ward's besetting 
 infirmity was a certain prolixity, a love of detail which 
 did not always contribute to the interest of the 
 story, an incapacity, it may be, of arriving at the 
 central incidents without a great deal of slow and 
 deliberate preparation, which at times was in no 
 small measure wearisome. For both of these reasons 
 " The Story of Bessie Costrell " is, for authoress and 
 reader alike, an extremely valuable study. Not only 
 is the scene laid wholly in a village district, to which 
 is given the name of Clinton Magna, but, from the 
 necessities of the case, the short study of the tempta- 
 tion and fall of the heroine requires a concentration 
 which we have sometimes missed in the earlier works. 
 The result is a brief, decided, and masterful sketch, 
 in which all the light and shade is subordinate to 
 the main purpose of the narrative, and the figure of 
 Bessie Costrell herself stands out with undeniable 
 attractiveness and interest. 
 
 It is no vulgar story of passion, nor yet are the 
 motives which influence the heroine those that have 
 been made use of times without number in the develop- 
 ment of a tragic conclusion. Bessie Costrell is the 
 wife of a gloomy, narrow-minded Dissenter, a man 
 subject to deep moods of religious melancholia ; 
 proud, as all isolated natures are proud ; sure of his 
 own superior worth, because he has never yet had 
 
 21 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 the opportunity of measuring his own moral instincts 
 with those of fellow-creatures of another stamp and a 
 different range of temptation. Isaac Costrell's wife, 
 Bessie, belongs to the weaker and more lovable variety 
 of humankind ; she is nervous, excitable, full of 
 changing inclinations, fond of gaiety and spending 
 money, infirm, vain, and easily led astray. But her 
 fall is not due to the attractions of another kind of 
 love than that which her husband can give her; it 
 is a far narrower and fiercer temptation. An old 
 peasant, John Bolderfield, leaves in her charge, as his 
 nearest relative, a box full of his hoarded gains, while 
 he seeks employment in another village. The husband 
 does not care for the responsibility ; the wife embraces 
 it with zeal, as an indubitable proof of her own con- 
 sequence and importance. Then, because hers is the 
 disposition which is for ever seeking new sensations, 
 and is inspired with a restless love of change, the 
 consciousness of wealth, even though it may not be 
 her own, leads straight to her doom. She is often 
 seen at the Spotted Deer, sometimes drinking a good 
 deal herself, and liking to stand treat to all and sundry 
 — posing as the centre of the hilarious group, who 
 wonder how it comes to pass that she should have 
 so many stray half-crowns to spend. The secret, of 
 course, is not hard to divine. Little by little the 
 contents of old John Bolderfield's box grow less and 
 less, until at last a dissolute son of her husband, a 
 wastrel called Timothy, discovers her kneeling before 
 her treasure, and incontinently removes all the gold 
 and silver that remains into his own pocket. Fate now 
 
 22 
 
Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 
 has her entirely in its grasp. John Bolderfield returns 
 and demands his hoarded store. The husband 
 discovers that his wife is a thief. Everything points 
 to the imminent destiny of a shameful trial and still 
 more shameful imprisonment, and the wretched 
 woman's only resource is to make away with her 
 ruined life. 
 
 A mere analysis, however, of the story gives but 
 little indication of its sincere and convincing power. 
 The picture is etched in with the simplest and 
 severest strokes ; where everything naturally seems 
 to lead to melodrama the authoress refuses to be led 
 away from the strictest and most austere tragedy. 
 There are no garish notes, no appeal to the commonest 
 form of human emotion, no suggestions of sentimental 
 passion ; it is merely a pitiless study of a common 
 peasant woman yielding to the drink-fiend and 
 involving herself and her home in sordid ruin. And 
 for this very reason the characters of the humble 
 little tale are indubitably alive as they are inherently 
 forcible — the old peasant, John Bolderfield, with that 
 accumulation of sovereigns which distinguishes him 
 from his fellows, an object of envy to the village; the 
 hard-hearted Isaac Costrell, to whom it comes as an 
 intolerable shock to his pride, that, instead of being 
 one of Heaven's elect, he is the husband of a thief; 
 Bessie herself, placed in circumstances which made 
 too strong an appeal to her especial weaknesses, 
 overpowered by the lust for drink, yielding to the 
 sudden mirage of wealth, dreaming that in time 
 everything could be put right without any loss of 
 
 23 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 reputation or hint of disaster. In the sombre, quiet 
 lights of this rustic picture we feel the sure touch of 
 the artist who realizes the heart of humanity under 
 the most commonplace types ; who can make us 
 pardon everything because she makes us know every- 
 thing, who can use the simplest pigments and yet 
 produce a pictorial effect which we cannot easily 
 forget. In some respects " The Story of Bessie 
 Costrell " may be compared with Mrs. Words's " A 
 Village Tragedy," and although it has not the same 
 poignant realism, the same heart-breaking veracity as 
 that singularly lurid and powerful little sketch, it, too, 
 can give us personages of flesh and blood, creatures 
 of our common clay, which we can understand and 
 sympathize with and forgive. 
 
 § 5 
 
 It IS to the credit of Mrs. Humphry Ward that 
 she always writes under the dominion of high ideals. 
 There is, in every case, the seriousness of statement, 
 the thoroughness of study, the sense of intellectual 
 responsibility for things which she has thought out 
 and pondered for herself, which mark the deeper con- 
 ceptions of a novelist's calling. To write a romance 
 is no child's play for her. It is an anguish and 
 labour of the spirit, a wrestling with difficult questions 
 which must not be touched at all unless they are 
 accurately weighed in the balances of a reasonable 
 judgment. It is no criticism on Mrs. Ward's work 
 
 24 
 
Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 
 to say that it is didactic, full of a serious and oppres- 
 sive moral ; it is just what she would glory in, the 
 very task which she believes incumbent upon her as 
 an artist. From one point of view this may injure 
 both the attractive force and the dramatic mechanism 
 of her stories ; but, on the other hand, in an age when 
 the infinitely little seems to be the preoccupation of 
 artistic minds, and in which the only two recognized 
 qualities of the novelist are intellectual smartness and 
 a glib facility of style, there are many, assuredly, who 
 feel grateful to Mrs. Humphry Ward for so respect- 
 fully treating humanity as to believe it capable of 
 deeper and more enduring interests. 
 
 What is a tragedy ? Is it the conflict of elemental 
 forces, the struggle of two masterful energies in a 
 man's or a woman's soul ? Is it the ceaseless fight 
 between character and circumstance, between heredity 
 and fate, between the influence of the past, and the 
 guiding and remorseless hand of future destiny ? 
 Doubtless, it is out of these and other elements that 
 tragedy gets its meaning — with the added proviso 
 that, whatever the character of the conflict may be, 
 it must be exhibited to us under ideal or typical 
 conditions, and not, as is the practice of Ibsen, dis- 
 played in the back parlour of a provincial newspaper 
 office, or on the fourth floor of a common lodging- 
 house. " Helbeck of Bannisdale " is clearly a tragedy 
 representing the clash of paramount and masterful 
 forces in the simplest, and therefore the most im- 
 pressive of ways. Mrs. Humphry Ward is never 
 fond of side issues, and when she takes us from 
 
 25 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 the main interest of her stories we feel that she 
 leaves her principal characters with reluctance. She 
 knows the value of a suitable background to her 
 plots, but the mise-en-sdne must be Nature's own — 
 the changing aspects of the countryside in all its 
 alternating gloom and glory, not the picture of sub- 
 ordinate personages brought in to give us comic 
 relief or to vary the monotony of the central problem. 
 She can delineate her rustics, it is true, with something 
 of the singular ability of George Eliot, and, as in duty 
 bound, she brings in here and there brief sketches 
 of unimportant figures, hovering uncertainly on the 
 edges of her plot. But her heart is not with them, 
 and she makes us feel it. Her intense preoccupa- 
 tion with the essential elements leaves her no time 
 or inclination to enrich her narrative with a series of 
 graceful or ludicrous characters, such as those which 
 both in Thackeray and Dickens add ease and variety 
 to the tableau. 
 
 In ** Helbeck of Bannisdale " there are just two 
 real characters. The whole story lies in a nutshell. 
 Helbeck of Bannisdale is by birth and breeding 
 a Papist, of a peculiarly lofty and dignified type. 
 A Cambridge professor, Dr. Friedland, small as 
 his sympathy is with the hero, fully recognizes 
 the kind of man he is. "Catholicism at its best 
 — worse luck ! No mean or puerile type, with 
 all its fetichisms and unreasons on its head — no 
 — a type sprung from the best English blood, 
 disciplined by heroic memories, by the perse- 
 cution and hardships of the penal laws." There is 
 
 26 
 
Mrs* Humphry Ward 
 
 nothing, in truth, mean or small about Helbeck of 
 Bannisdale. He has suffered in the good cause, has 
 parted with his worldly goods, and impoverished his 
 estate, because, in the corner of Westmoreland where 
 he resides, he will keep alight the sacred flame of a 
 pure Catholic faith. And what happens ? His sister, 
 a poor, shrinking, sensitive creature, led by tepid 
 emotions, and the victim of constantly fluctuating 
 impulses, has married a Cambridge man, who is not 
 even a Christian at all, but a scientific student — 
 a resolute sceptic, with a sincere and deeply felt 
 abhorrence of all the mummeries and hypocritical 
 delusions under which religion has so often concealed 
 her essence. Such a weak, inconstant creature as 
 Augustina Fountain cannot long remain in the 
 negative attitude of suspense to which her husband 
 invited her. After Mr. Fountain's death she re- 
 turns to the old Catholic creed, and, according to the 
 ordinance of an ironic fate, brings with her to her 
 brother's home in Bannisdale her step-daughter, Laura 
 Fountain, a girl trained by the academic sceptic to 
 despise, as he did, that old enemy of human reason 
 and freedom, the mediaeval and superstitious church. 
 This arrival of Laura Fountain in a house full of 
 Catholic memories, and associated in the mind of its 
 owner with a very precise and imperative ritual, is 
 the beginning of troubles for Helbeck of Bannisdale. 
 A conflict is inevitable from the outset, because of 
 the very nature of the two combatants. Take it first 
 on its purely human side. Here is a man, a stern 
 and solitary recluse, full of self-will and mastery, 
 
 27 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 still in his middle age, with some ancient fires of 
 youthful passion yet smouldering, though he hardly 
 suspected their existence, in his reticent and well- 
 controlled nature. Opposite to him, sitting with 
 him at table, the ordinary and familiar companion 
 of his garden and his drawing-room, is a young 
 girl, beautiful, capricious, wayward, exercising all the 
 interest and curiosity of a character at war with her 
 surroundings, breathing a difficult and uncongenial 
 air. What more natural or more unavoidable than 
 the gradual drawing together of these two by that 
 most subtle and most fatal of links, the sense of 
 contrast ? From a purely superficial standpoint, 
 nothing, it may be, seems more unlikely than that 
 Helbeck of Bannisdale should fall in love with Laura 
 Fountain, and that his passion should be returned. 
 But the heart has strange attractions and influences 
 of its own, as every novelist knows, and a dissimilarity 
 of nature is as potent a cause of love as any obvious 
 likeness or fancied sympathy. There is a cousin of 
 the heroine living in the neighbourhood, Hubert 
 Mason, a handsome young boor, her natural com- 
 panion in point of age, and full of a very obvious 
 liking for her charms. But his clumsy adoration 
 only makes it more certain that Laura Fountain is 
 not for him, but for the mystic, the ascetic saint, 
 whom her circumstances and her education should 
 have inclined her to detest. 
 
 Viewed, however, from the spiritual side, this 
 gradual awakening of human emotion and tenderness 
 assumes a far more serious character. Both the man 
 
 28 
 
Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 
 and the girl belong to no commonplace order of being. 
 They have each a tremendous and insistent personality 
 of their own. If Helbeck of Bannisdale falls in 
 love with the petulant daughter of a sceptic, it is not 
 without a poignant and constantly renewed struggle 
 in the recesses of his mind. A weaker man might 
 have temporized with the difficulty in which he found 
 himself, might have recognized that, after all, our 
 common humanity has its rights, and that he was not 
 wrong to give his heart freely to the alien nature 
 which made so strong an appeal to his sensibility. 
 But Alan Helbeck's character is not run in this 
 narrow or conventional mould. For him religion 
 must come first or not at all ; ancestral vows were 
 upon his head. Nor yet will Laura Fountain yield 
 a tame submission to the temptation which was be- 
 setting her. With her whole soul she had loved her 
 father, and had sympathized with him in all his 
 arrogant denunciations of faith and religion. If she 
 had been more adequately educated she might have 
 fought her battle better, for then she would have had 
 something stronger than mere affectionate loyalty to 
 a dead father to guide her will. But the tragedy of 
 her position is that she can only oppose blind feeling 
 to the riotous madness in her veins, only cite a 
 father's memory as a champion against the sweet 
 enchantments of a new and strange affection. Back- 
 wards and forwards through the long course of the 
 story, her nature wavers under this strain, now in 
 tender submission to her fate, now in fierce and 
 passionate rebellion. She allows herself to become 
 
 29 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 engaged to Helbeck of Bannisdale, and then discovers 
 that a closer union is impossible. Subsequently, after 
 a violent rending of her bonds, she falls a victim once 
 more, going so far as to consent to become a Catholic 
 in order to win that closer alliance between hearts 
 which her nature craves. And once again her yoke 
 is too difficult to bear. Her stepmother dies without 
 being informed of the intended change of creed, and 
 Laura Fountain accepts this as a kind of menace 
 from Heaven. There is no issue for this self-tor- 
 mented nature save one. She can neither live with 
 her lover nor without him, and she seeks in a self- 
 inflicted death an escape from the cruel tyranny of 
 circumstances. 
 
 Such is Mrs. Humphry Ward's story — one 
 engrossing, spiritual tragedy throughout, a long, un- 
 certain, and ceaseless strife between the competing 
 claims of an old faith and a new humanity. It is one 
 of the best written of her novels, replete with passages 
 of powerful and subtle analysis, as well as brilliant 
 and picturesque glimpses of Westmoreland scenery. 
 It is nothing more nor less than a soul problem, 
 and such things are not always popular in our 
 hurrying age. But to those who care for the 
 primary elements out of which human character is 
 composed, it raises in a new form one of the oldest 
 of questions which no one has ever yet been able to 
 answer. Which is the stronger force of these two 
 overpowering influences over the human personality, 
 religion or love ? Which goes the deeper into the 
 foundation of our being? Which of the two, in 
 
 30 
 
Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 
 the case of conflict, ought to prevail ? No one can 
 say, because the answer depends on the character 
 of the personality/ and the solution which one man 
 accepts is indignantly denied by another. It is of 
 the very essence of art to reveal to us these obscure 
 and horrible antagonisms which have so often rent 
 men's lives in twain, and in this novel we have by no 
 means an unworthy contribution to the discussion 
 of problems out of which are wrought the most 
 sombre and desolating tragedies of life. 
 
 §6 
 
 In "Helbeck of Bannisdale" we had a small 
 canvas ; in " Eleanor " we have a still smaller canvas. 
 The story moves slowly, so slowly ; the deliberation 
 of method tends to become an actual source of 
 irritation. Five hundred pages of small print, and 
 just three principal characters, or at the utmost four. 
 Twenty-five chapters, none of them short, and yet a 
 plot that can be told in a paragraph. There is the 
 hero, Edward Manisty, thoughtful, yet impetuous ; a 
 man with a fine leonine head and big ideas, attracted, 
 as every artist is, by the external framework and 
 disciplinary effectiveness of the Roman Catholic 
 Church ; a thinker enlisted on the side of order, 
 hating the narrow energy of the modern spirit ; a 
 student, lastly, with an almost unsuspected fount of 
 human passion in his heart. There is the heroine, 
 Eleanor Burgoyne, delicate, refined, spiritiielle, a 
 
 31 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 widow with an unhappy past, whose youth has 
 been renewed by a keen intellectual sympathy 
 between her and Manisty, working at his book 
 side by side with him, facing in his company the 
 same intellectual problems. There is the slighter, 
 younger, fresher figure of the American girl, Lucy 
 Foster, destined, as all triumphant youth is, to 
 conquer by sheer force of animal spirits and life, 
 and win the love denied to the older woman. These 
 are the three principal characters, and if we add a 
 fourth, it must be that of the excommunicated priest, 
 Father Benecke, a singularly sweet and pathetic 
 figure, full of torment and revolt, because his 
 acceptance of modern thought has made his position 
 impossible within the Roman Catholic communion. 
 Add to this the carefully drawn background of 
 Italian landscape, painted as Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 knows always how to paint the natural beauty of the 
 scenes in the midst of which her figures live and 
 move and have their being. Restful pictures these, 
 which the artist lingers over with infinite love, 
 although their fine elaboration often arrests the 
 progress of the story. 
 
 That story is, indeed, foreshadowed in the earliest 
 chapter. When Lucy Foster, a shy, undeveloped 
 American girl, comes to stay with Edward Manisty, 
 his aunt, and his cousin, Eleanor Burgoyne, in their 
 Italian villa, we know at once that she is fated to 
 bring discord into the quiet home. Slowly and in- 
 sensibly Eleanor had, through intellectual sympathy, 
 grown to love the man with whom she was working ; 
 
 12 
 
Mrs* Humphry Ward 
 
 while he, on his part, through sheer force of habit, had 
 learned to look upon Eleanor as an indispensable 
 friend and companion. All this ceases when Lucy 
 Foster arrives. Her presence in the villa is like that 
 of Miss Fountain in the house of Helbeck of Bannis- 
 dale, a perpetual challenge, an initial antagonism, out 
 of which blossoms eventually the gracious flower of 
 love. What this means to Eleanor Burgoyne it is 
 easy to surmise, albeit that the ultimate issue is not 
 doubtful. In the long run, as we know, Lucy Foster 
 and Edward Manisty will join hands, and the sweet 
 pathetic personality of Eleanor will efface itself by 
 some sublime act of self-sacrifice in order to procure 
 the happiness of those she loves. It is the working 
 out of the spiritual anguish of her heroine, Eleanor, 
 to which Mrs. Humphry Ward devotes page after 
 page, chapter after chapter, of unwearied analysis. 
 The result is a masterpiece of feminine psychology, 
 which many readers will find long, but few will have 
 the heart to call dull. The slow torture of Eleanor, 
 the realization of her failure, the instinctive revolt 
 against the inescapable fate, the tardy acquiescence, 
 the generous surrender — this is the theme of Mrs. 
 Ward's novel. 
 
 Self-sacrifice, in fact, is the ethical goal to which 
 the authoress is all along leading us. Like George ^ / 
 Eliot in so many of her books, Mrs. Ward makes the ^ 
 essential nobility of women turn on their readiness to 
 give themselves up on the altar of their affection or 
 their duty. Eleanor Burgoyne resisted this cate- 
 gorical imperative as long as she could, and she is 
 
 33 l> 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 all the more human for her struggles. She fought 
 against Edward Manisty. She took Lucy Foster 
 away with her in a sudden flight to the hills. She 
 claimed for herself the right to defend her own in- 
 terests. She determined that as Manisty had punished 
 her, he should himself be punished, and if her own 
 happiness were lost, his, at least, should never be 
 secured. The gentle woman became a schemer, a 
 rebel, a hard, suspicious, obstinate martyr. What 
 conquered her at the last? Two things above all. 
 Lucy Foster herself was one of the agents — so proud, 
 so simple, so self-forgetting in the zealous champion- 
 ship of her friend. And there was besides the recog- 
 nition, made sooner or later by every soul touched to 
 fine issues, that there are other tragedies, greater and 
 more poignant than one's own. The first human 
 instinct is always the same — is any sorrow so great 
 as my sorrow ? And then succeeds a softer mood. 
 To Eleanor comes the influence, first, of a proud 
 Italian lady who has lost her son and all her hopes 
 on the fatal battlefield of Adowa, and subsequently 
 of Father Benecke — the tragedy of the priest-like 
 nature prevented by a tyrannous religious organi- 
 zation from discharging his priest-like functions. A 
 long struggle ends with the submission of Eleanor. 
 She thought she had signed her death-warrant when 
 she gave Edward Manisty to Lucy Foster ; she had 
 in reality won a new life, gained a final peace. So 
 vital is the claim of human fellowship and sympathy, 
 so imperative the divine law that no man liveth for 
 himself. A subject like this, inwrought as it is with 
 
 34 
 
Mrs* Humphry Ward 
 
 the whole history of human life and progress, is in 
 every sense worthy of the grave and eloquent pen of 
 Mrs. Humphry Ward. 
 
 § 7 
 
 Mrs. Ward's latest novel is a fine, deliberate 
 piece of work, admirably thought out in detail 
 and full of careful drawing of character. Indeed, 
 in -many ways it is, perhaps, the best of her 
 novels, for it preaches no moral, it is not intended 
 to illustrate any social, religious, or intellectual 
 movement, it has nothing to do with religious pro- 
 blems, but is simply a clever transcript from the 
 life. Some hints of the story may possibly be 
 discerned in French memoirs and journals, especially 
 the Letters of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse ; but 
 Mrs. Ward has used her materials in her own way, 
 and has thought out for herself her studies of interest- 
 ing personages whose mutual relations form an 
 absorbing narrative. The main idea is the career of 
 a heroine who, in some senses, might be called an 
 adventuress, Julie Le Breton, who has not even a 
 right to her own name, Lady Rose's daughter, but is 
 an illegitimate child. Adventuress no doubt is the 
 title which many of those who surrounded her might 
 have applied to her personality ; but there was no 
 trace in her of vulgar elements. She was ambitious 
 without being sordid in her ambition. She had all 
 the elements of a great lady and the instincts of one 
 
 35 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 who was born to rule. In a luminous passage the 
 heroine is thus described by the authoress of her 
 being : " Here, indeed, one came upon the fact which 
 for ever differentiated her from the adventuress. She 
 wanted money and name ; there were days when she 
 hungered for them. But she would not give too 
 reckless a price for them. She was a personality, a 
 soul, not a vulgar woman ; not merely callous or 
 greedy. She dreaded to be miserable ; she had a 
 thirst for happiness ; and the heart was, after all, 
 stronger than the head." Such a girl, placed in the 
 ignoble position of companion to Lady Henry, would 
 at once suffer and triumph. Sooner or later, with 
 her invincible will, she would find her own opportunity. 
 But meanwhile she would have to put up with all the 
 nameless petty persecutions which her dependent 
 situation and the imperious will of an autocratic 
 mistress necessitated. If Julie Le Breton is delineated 
 with infinite care through all the chapters which 
 narrate her life history, so, too, is Lady Henry well 
 drawn — a hard, selfish, imperious dame, accustomed 
 to command, and finding in the failure of her powers 
 and the increasing weariness of old age much material 
 for spite against the brilliant young woman who kept 
 her salon together. 
 
 " Lady Rose's Daughter " is above all remarkable 
 for the care and skill with which most of the characters 
 are developed. Lady Henry has been already men- 
 tioned, and beside her is a whole gallery of notabilities. 
 There is Sir Wilfrid Bury, a clear-sighted old diplomat, 
 kindly, intelligent, a man of affairs, taking the view 
 
 36 
 
Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 
 of the accomplished spectator with regard to all the 
 incidents that pass under his ken. Then there is 
 Montresor, a politician and War Minister ; Dr. 
 Meredith, a journalist of capacity and influence ; 
 Lord Lackington, an aged peer, who, though for half 
 the story he is unaware of the fact, is in reality the 
 grandfather of the heroine — Byronic in some of his 
 traits, a leader of society, with a greater youthfulness 
 of demeanour and character than his years warrant. 
 Or, again, there is Jacob Delafield, who is in a sense 
 the hero of the novel. As we see him at the com- 
 mencement he is imperfectly developed, immature, 
 full of indefinite possibilities. His undergraduate 
 career was not a success, his youth was too vague 
 and sluggish. Slowly, however, there is discerned 
 beneath the outward lineaments of a man three-parts 
 a dreamer the steady growth of an iron and resolute 
 will. He has said to himself that he will win Julie 
 Le Breton for his wife, whatever may be the ob- 
 stacles which destiny or the caprices of the lady may 
 interpose between him and his ambition. He is in 
 his own despite fated to hold a high position in the 
 State. He does not wish to be a duke, but a dukedom 
 is, as it were, thrust upon him owing to the death of 
 sickly relations. Even at the last he shrinks from 
 the responsibilities of his high estate. Only when 
 his chief desire is accomplished, and when Julie 
 promises to be his wife, does he finally accept his 
 position with all that it entails. Having won the 
 main object of his existence, the attendant circum- 
 stances may group themselves as they will. The 
 
 37 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 slow development of the man has reached its natural 
 term, and Jacob Delafield, the dreamer, the youth of 
 uncertain promise, stands revealed before our eyes as 
 the one indubitably strong man of the story. 
 
 Besides these principal personages there are a 
 number of characters subordinate, not so much in 
 importance as in the management of the plot. The 
 Duchess of Crowborough, slightly sketched as she is, 
 is a very real portrait of a soft, lovable, doll-like, 
 creature, capable of warm affections, throughout the 
 sincere friend of the heroine. Her husband, the duke, 
 full of material interests, the sportsman, the mere 
 animal, is drawn with equally felicitous strokes. But 
 possibly the one character about whom we should 
 like to learn a little more than the authoress is inclined 
 to tell us, is the very man with whom Julie is pas- 
 sionately in love. Captain Warkworth, a soldier of 
 fortune, with somewhat doubtful antecedents, clever, 
 handsome, fascinating, crosses the heroine's path, 
 with results that might well have been fatal both to 
 her career and to his. In India he has engaged him- 
 self — being at once devoid of resource and devoured 
 with ambition — to an anaemic heiress, Aileen Moffat ; 
 in London he is inclined to put this early romance 
 out of his head, owing to the charms of Julie Le 
 Breton. She, on her part, slow to succumb to the 
 attractions of the ordinary figures of metropolitan 
 society, yields at once to the charm of this curious 
 and somewhat enigmatical character, and is prepared 
 to go with him to all lengths, albeit that her sane 
 intelligence tells her that no happiness is possible in 
 
 33 
 
Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 
 that direction. Warkworth wishes to rise in his pro- 
 fession. Thanks to the interest which Julie is able to 
 make in his behalf, he is appointed to a distinguished 
 position, the military leader of the Mokemb6 mission. 
 But he is bound to marry money, and not link his 
 fortune with a penniless and nameless heroine, how- 
 ever distinguished and beautiful. Yet there comes a 
 moment when he asks her to go away with him to 
 France, and she consents. Three days at least of 
 happiness shall be purchased at whatever cost. But 
 fate is kinder to Julie than she deserves, and Jacob 
 Delafield brings her home again before she meets her 
 hero, confronting her with the news of Lord Lacking- 
 ton's serious illness. From this point the narrative 
 runs on lines which can easily be anticipated. Wark- 
 worth goes on his mission, and promptly dies of fever. 
 Then, after many hesitations and much mental 
 struggle, Julie accepts the inevitable, and becomes 
 Jacob Delafield's wife. There is a peculiar fitness in 
 this denouement, because throughout we are shown in 
 the personality of the heroine the conflict of two 
 ideals, neither of which is strong enough to conquer 
 the other. Julie Le Breton passionately desires hap- 
 piness. With all the disadvantages of her birth, she 
 is equally aware that she must establish herself in a 
 social position far removed from the slander of worldly 
 tongues. Her rich, sensuous nature is captivated by 
 Captain Warkworth ; her clear intelligence is all the 
 while conscious that not the soldier but the future 
 duke is the man with whom she should link her 
 fortunes. To a character like hers, love would never 
 
 39 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 be enough. She could never endure to be poor. 
 Hence in the sequel the practical instincts prevail. 
 There was no particular romance in her relations with 
 Delafield, except, indeed, on his side ; but there were 
 solid advantages in being a duchess. If from one 
 point of view we thus see that the adventuress secures 
 her goal, we are equally sure from another standpoint 
 that it was only through much discipline and training 
 that this odd, fierce, natural creature could eventually 
 learn to subordinate her own will to that of a man 
 infinitely stronger than she was. Warkworth, per- 
 haps necessarily, falls into the background — a clever 
 sketch imperfectly carried out — a personality who at 
 once interests and fails to satisfy us. It is almost 
 with relief that we find him succumbing to African 
 fever, in order that he may be removed out of the 
 way. 
 
 The story is conducted with that sure mastery of 
 incident and that patient analysis of a given situation 
 to which Mrs. Humphry Ward has accustomed us in 
 all her later work. Here is a novel which we can 
 enjoy for no extrinsic reasons connected either with 
 the problems it discusses or the moral it preaches, 
 but simply and solely for its own artistic excellence. 
 Never has Mrs. Humphry Ward's hand worked 
 more triumphantly in the creation of significant per- 
 sonalities. Her portraits are at once well designed 
 and accurately carried out. We do not easily forget 
 Lady Henry and Sir Wilfrid, Montresor and Mere- 
 dith, Lord Lackington and the Duchess of Crow- 
 borough. They stand before us as living types whom 
 
 40 
 
Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 
 we should recognize if we met — things of real flesh 
 and blood, never the inventions of an imaginative 
 novel-writer. And Julie Le Breton herself is an 
 admirable study of a heroine, who enlists our interest 
 almost from the first page, and retains our sympathy 
 to the last. Perhaps it is unnecessary to say that the 
 novel is well written. Numerous passages are to be 
 found of literary grace and strength ; numerous scenes 
 like those in which Lady Henry appears, or that 
 crucial interview between Julie and Captain Wark- 
 worth, which are replete with dramatic significance. 
 "Lady Rose's Daughter" will undoubtedly take its 
 place in contemporary literature as one of the finest 
 specimens of the work of a singularly able and 
 thoughtful novelist. 
 
 41 
 
JOHN OLIVER HOBBES 
 
JOHN OLIVER HOBBES 
 
 FOR some years there were reasons for suspecting 
 that, while the author of" Some Emotions and 
 a Moral " and " The Sinner's Comedy " possessed, in 
 no slight measure, the faculties of observation and of 
 criticism, she was deficient in, or at all events had 
 not yet given evidence of, the gift of construction. 
 There was, perhaps, a superabundance of wit, but not 
 much delineation of character ; there was at times an 
 almost wearisome smartness, but no story. But after 
 *' The Gods, Some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham," 
 it could no longer be said that John Oliver Hobbes 
 (Mrs. Craigie) had only a talent for brevity and 
 sparkle. The book contains one very serious study, 
 which is enriched with a number of interesting 
 sketches, and which so far yields to the conventional 
 demand for a definite conclusion that it suggests in 
 its final pages a wholly unnecessary and superfluous 
 marriage. The last point, indeed, is not much to its 
 credit, and it is somewhat strange that the author, 
 having brought her personages into positions in which 
 their life-history is ended and their obvious tasks 
 complete, can yet believe it incumbent on her to 
 
 45 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 provide that sound of wedding-bells without which, it 
 used to be said, no well-regulated novel is complete. 
 
 The title is stranger still. " The Gods, Some 
 Mortals, and Lord Wickenham " conveys no idea to 
 the ordinary uninstructed reader of the theme of the 
 story. It would be difficult to say where the gods 
 come into the question, unless in this reference they 
 stand for that unkind and malignant fate which 
 persists in uniting contradictory couples together in 
 wedlock. Lord Wickenham, although he is given a 
 position of such importance on the title-page, is in 
 reality a subordinate character, the friend of the hero, 
 Simon Warre, and the man who eventually marries, 
 as we learn from the unfortunate postscript, the idol 
 of the hero's heart. Perhaps it is in this sense that 
 he abides triumphant after both gods and mortals 
 have done their worst. Nemesis has worked its will 
 on the hero ; the gods, who rejoice in upsetting the 
 best-laid schemes of poor human beings, have had no 
 inconsiderable success ; the mortals have paid the 
 penalty for their short-sightedness and wilfulness. 
 But Lord Wickenham remains, the one man that has 
 achieved his destiny, such as it is, in uniting himself 
 with the girl who loved his dead friend and who 
 preserves her memory of him as the sole romance of 
 her life. All these are small points, however, which 
 do not interfere with the main excellence of John 
 Oliver Hobbes' novel. She has drawn one completely 
 thought-out character, and very nearly succeeded in 
 drawing another. The indubitable triumph is Anne 
 Passer ; the half-achieved portrait is Simon Warre. 
 
 46 
 
John Oliver Hobbes 
 
 She is no very lovable or delightful person, this 
 Anne Passer, to whom the author introduces us. 
 She is the daughter of Sir Hugh Delaware, a broken- 
 down baronet, who had drifted into impecuniosity and 
 a subordinate position at the Bank of England. Her 
 father was eccentric and dreamy ; her mother retained 
 a great deal of superficial piety ; but Anne Passer — 
 this was her professional name as a singer — seems to 
 have derived little or nothing from either parent. 
 Physically a perfect animal, with a charm to stir 
 men's senses, she is without any moral instincts 
 whatsoever. She tells falsehoods, because such has 
 become her habit ; she deceives those who know her 
 best, not out of malice prepense, but through some 
 natural obliquity of her nature; she is greedily 
 avaricious of notoriety, of jewels, and of money. 
 She is one of those creatures whom nature has 
 provided with an imperial form in order to make up 
 for the absolute hollowness within. You cannot call 
 her heartless, because she never possessed a heart ; 
 you can hardly call her sinful, because she never had 
 the slightest idea of the difference between good and 
 evil. But she has the trick of appearing innocent, 
 and in this aspect of her versatile character she 
 captivated Simon Warre at a moment of reaction 
 and disgust from the failure of his earlier aims. 
 Simon Warre is a very successful doctor, who has all 
 along nourished a secret hope that he might induce a 
 young Italian girl, Allegra Vendranium, to marry 
 him ; but because, on his last visit to Italy, the young 
 lady seemed cold and reserved, and has sent him an 
 
 47 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 unsympathetic letter, he elects, for no very obvious 
 reason, except the perversity of the masculine heart, 
 to offer himself to Anne Passer. 
 
 Such a union, of course, was bound to end in 
 discord. Simon Warre learns, little by little, all the 
 past history of the girl he has made his wife, especially 
 her relations with a certain Algernon Dane, a libertine 
 and a rake, who is inconsiderate enough to get killed 
 on the very day of her wedding. In dull and hopeless 
 dismay the hero realizes the terrible mistake he has 
 made. But his character, being a complex one, is 
 not analyzed with that complete lucidity which we 
 have a right to demand. He has at once a strong 
 and a weak will ; he has a touch of real asceticism, 
 and yet exhibits, on occasions, a most curious yield- 
 ing to foolish sentimental instincts. Why he should 
 decide that his old love, AUegra, could never become 
 his wife is by no means clear, nor yet is it altogether 
 obvious why, when his wife Anne runs away from 
 him with an empty-headed Australian, he should so 
 steadily refuse to divorce her. His friend, Lord 
 Wickenham, thinks he understands him, but prac- 
 tically gives over the task to the author, and the 
 author does not seem quite sure. By the side of 
 Anne Passer he remains only an interesting sketch, 
 whereas she is an admirably full-blooded creation. 
 Half an hour after she has confessed to her newly 
 wedded husband her intrigue with Algernon Dane 
 she wonders why he should look cross — a curiously 
 happy touch which reveals to us at a flash the vain 
 and vacuous instability of her temperament. She is 
 
 48 
 
John Oliver Hobbes 
 
 at heart a courtesan, nothing more and nothing less, 
 described with a power and insight certainly not 
 equalled by anything that John Oliver Hobbes had 
 done before. 
 
 Nor is there less care bestowed on the style. It 
 is quite clear where John Oliver Hobbes bestows her 
 literary homage; the influence of George Meredith 
 is conspicuous especially in the earlier pages. But 
 instead of the perpetual glitter of epigrammatic 
 aphorisms, which, if they did not always sadden us, 
 at least left us altogether cold, all the clever things 
 she has to say are strictly subordinated to the course 
 of the narrative, and are, as a rule only allowed to 
 come to the fore when the author is speaking in her 
 own person. Here, for instance, is an admirable defi- 
 nition of hospitality. Lord Wickenham has declared 
 that he does not invite his friends to smile at each 
 other in his own house in order that he might groan 
 at their wedding a little later on. " My dear Wick," is 
 the answer of the relation to whom he is talking, " the 
 genius of hospitality consists not so much in making 
 people meet, but in helping them to part on good 
 terms." A description of a man who had taught 
 himself never to look a truth in the face is thus 
 phrased : ** He had such a repugnance for plain facts 
 that he could only eat fruit when it was crystallized." 
 Nor is it otherwise than a good metaphor to liken the 
 used-up viveur to the last match. "He looks like 
 the last match left in a tray — the one which won't 
 burn." But apart from such more or less happy 
 efforts of smartness, together with some of the 
 
 49 E 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 familiar tendencies of latter-day cynicism, John Oliver 
 Hobbes rises now and again to a strain of real 
 eloquence. " There is a king's daughter," she 
 exhorts us, " for each one of us ; let us wed her, or 
 none other." And here, too, is a passage which 
 touches a higher level than we have hitherto looked 
 for in her pages : " If, after many years, the dead we 
 have broken our hearts for could return to us, what 
 should we say to them ? What should we offer } 
 Words which are only sounds, the arid stain of tears 
 once shed, a teeming love drilled into barren misery, 
 arms which have clasped thin air too long to know 
 how to embrace a friend. *Go back,' one would 
 say, ' go back ! I have forgotten how to be glad.' " 
 There is a strain of melancholy music in this passage 
 which atones for many epigrams. 
 
 §2 
 
 "The School for Saints" makes one instinc- 
 tively turn with renewed curiosity to Mrs. Craigie's 
 earlier work. The reader desires to know what 
 there was in the first things which he connects 
 with her name leading up to and explaining the 
 maturer thought and the better construction of the 
 new volume. For let at once the truth be told. 
 " The School for Saints " stands absolutely apart from 
 anything which Mrs. Craigie has hitherto designed 
 or attempted. What, in fact, has there been in the 
 past ? Clever stories — impertinences, petulances, one 
 
 SO 
 
John Oliver Hobbcs 
 
 might almost call them, of epigrammatic cleverness, 
 studies in which we know not which is the prevailing 
 impression, the smartness, or the vacuity. It is always 
 a terrible temptation to be clever. But cleverness is 
 the most desolating of gifts. It ends in and with 
 itself; it tells one nothing that one wants to know ; 
 it is a pose, a fashion, an exercise, a studied and 
 artificial thing, like the antics of an amateur actor, 
 like the technical excellence of the practised essayist. 
 We want something more from those who desire to 
 move the world, some evidence of the larger and 
 more comprehensive mind, which thinks and knows 
 and understands, which is not satisfied with the 
 glitter and superficial play of existence, but, without 
 any pedantry or priggishness, attempts to realize for 
 us the underlying and eternal problems. 
 
 From this point of view the stories of John Oliver 
 Hobbes present an ascending series. "The Gods, 
 Some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham," might perhaps, 
 in the judgment of some critics, be regarded as 
 only a longer study in the old manner. But " The 
 Herb-Moon," which followed it gave the first touch 
 of humanity — the sympathy with the dumb, humble 
 specimens of mortal creatures who can suffer and be 
 wretched, misunderstand one another and forgive, 
 without any voice, save that of the artist to chronicle 
 their existence. There were pages in "The Herb- 
 Moon" which alternately recalled the interpretative 
 work of George Eliot, and the polished excellence of 
 George Meredith. There were also passages written 
 under the inspiration of Thomas Hardy, and here 
 
 51 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 and there quiet meditative pages almost after the 
 fashion of Miss Austen. Indeed, the book] was an 
 amalgam of different styles, the earliest portion being 
 in many respects antithetical to both middle and 
 conclusion ; but the analytic work was excellent 
 throughout. 
 
 " The Herb Moon " receives its peculiar appella- 
 tion because one of the characters chooses to apply 
 this baffling description to a long engagement 
 Rose Arden has a long engagement with Robsart, 
 an engagement interrupted by several accidents and 
 mischances ; Edward Banish finds all the irony of 
 circumstances leagued against him in his ambition to 
 marry Miss Creey ; Sir Harry Blythe goes through a 
 variety of experiences, amatory and otherwise, before 
 he ultimately finds his fate. But the value of the 
 novel does not depend on these illustrations of the 
 herb-moon. What is really interesting is the careful 
 and quiet analysis of character devoted to apparently 
 commonplace personages, who, under the author's 
 skilful hands, reveal all sorts of latent possibilities. 
 And if there were nothing else to say about it, there 
 are two perfect and charming creations etched in, 
 with that abundance of humour in which Mrs. Craigie 
 is so strong, and completed with rare finish. When 
 Susan talks we cannot help but listen — ^just as we 
 did to the accents of George Eliot's immortal Mrs. 
 Poyser — and Mrs. Harrowby's conversations are every 
 one of them memorable. 
 
 But "The School for Saints" leaves all earlier 
 sketches and skeletons behind. There is no longer 
 
 52 
 
John Oliver Hobbes 
 
 the facile capacity for imitation, but the work of 
 an artist assured of her powers. There is still, of 
 course, proof of the school in which Mrs. Craigie 
 has trained herself — that elaborate style which was 
 coined in the mint of the author of " Diana of the 
 Crossways," and that outlook upon life which was 
 illustrated in the changing pictures of "Vanity 
 Fair." But it is no longer the cynical Thackeray — 
 it is Thackeray touched here and again to higher 
 emotions, capable of comprehending the spiritualisms 
 of mankind, the necessity for devotion and self- 
 sacrifice. 
 
 "The School for Saints'* deals with the life 
 history of Robert Orange — at least with that portion 
 of it which ends with his marriage — and leaves for 
 further investigation his literary and political career. 
 The title itself, happier than some of those 
 inscribed in the forefront of Mrs. Craigie's books, 
 indicates with sufficient clearness the problems 
 she elects to handle. For what else is " The School 
 for Saints " but the discipline of experience and 
 human action as it is brought to bear upon a nature 
 essentially meditative, philosophic, introspective — 
 upon a man who is forced to resist his innate 
 tendency to mysticism by the obligations of public 
 duties and the tyranny of human passion ? We 
 never quite understand Robert Orange until we see 
 the various threads of his complex personality drawn 
 together in the closing pages, when poverty is 
 driving him to work, and destiny has given him a 
 wife after his own heart. His origin explains some 
 
 53 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 of the odd corners of his individuality. His father, 
 a soldier turned into a priest, broke his vows, his 
 mother, beautiful, emotional, daring everything at 
 the bidding of her heart, had been disowned by her 
 family for her marriage. 
 
 Robert de Hauss^e Orange — for that is his true 
 name — possessed in equal parts the temperament of 
 the saint and the excitability and love of adventure 
 of a hero of romance. Indeed, one of the many 
 points suggested by this admirable study of a 
 complex character is whether there is ati fond any 
 difference between the highest forms of religious 
 ardour and romantic sensibility. The passionate 
 believer in the Catholic creed, is above all, the man 
 who can exalt his human love of Brigit Parflete into 
 an atmosphere of spiritual emotion. Philosophy 
 which begins with wonder often finds its final term 
 in mysticism ; religion, itself an emotion, sometimes 
 combines in one the feverish zeal of the devout 
 believer and the raptures of the aspiring lover. In 
 Orange's case, however, there was no weakness or 
 delusion in the judgments he passed upon himself 
 and upon life. If he was happy he analyzed the 
 sources of his happiness ; if he lived in a day-dream, 
 he knew the airy elements out of which such delicate 
 webs are woven. No man can be a fool when he 
 gains this self-knowledge. He loses, no doubt, the 
 intoxication, the madness, the dreams, but he has 
 his reward in a wide-eyed clearness of vision, in a 
 certain nobility which lifts him above the exigencies 
 of fate and the temptations of folly. Perhaps the 
 
 54 
 
John Oliver Hobbes 
 
 strongest characteristic in Orange was his religious 
 faith ; the next his literary instincts. Brigit, the idol 
 of his heart, stood apart from either of these over- 
 mastering yet distinct devotions. Her soul did not 
 stand in his own soul's stead. " When a woman is 
 the first and chief consideration in a man's life, or 
 when a man becomes the first and chief consideration 
 in a woman's life, the end in each case will be always 
 cruel and foolish, always an insupportable disappoint- 
 ment to one or to the other, or to both." There 
 sounds the death-knell of romance, but it is the 
 beginning of wisdom. And to such wisdom Robert 
 Orange, despite his passion for Brigit, had already 
 attained. 
 
 In what form Robert Orange ultimately developed 
 we are told in a succeeding volume. " The School 
 for Saints" is intended to show how his character 
 was originally formed. We know him to be a 
 dreamy, impressionable youth, for at the very outset 
 of his career his head is full of tales of medieeval 
 chivalry, and he falls in love with the beautiful 
 actress, Madame Duboc. It is at a subsequent 
 period that he forms the acquaintance of Brigit — 
 the Juliet to his early Rosaline — who is none other 
 than the daughter of Madame Duboc and the 
 Archduke Charles of Alberia, a girl of seventeen, 
 who reproduces all her mother's charm, combined 
 with a nobility and strength beyond her years. 
 When Robert meets her, she has already been 
 hurried into a marriage with a peculiarly obnoxious 
 scoundrel, called Wrexham Parflete, a gambler, a 
 
 55 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 rou^ with a turn for satire and irony, a viveur and 
 libertine, who makes his first and fatal mistake by 
 being detected in cheating at cards. The man is 
 one out of several ably limned characters which 
 surround the main personages of the tale, such as 
 the Archduke Charles, Lord Reckage, Baron Zeuill, 
 Madura, Lord Wight, Lady Fitz-Rewes, and others. 
 To the hero, however, the real education of his 
 temperament comes not from the acquaintances 
 he makes, or the friends whose companionship he 
 desires, but from the incidents of his career. With 
 some ambition for a Parliamentary life, he falls 
 under the influence of Disraeli, and wins a con- 
 tested election. Then the changes and chances of 
 his life transport him to Spain at the time of the 
 abortive Carlist insurrection some thirty years ago. 
 Just as in the case of Mr. Merriman's story, "In 
 Kedar's Tents," we find a young Englishman inter- 
 fering in the politics of the Spanish Peninsula, and 
 coming under the authority of General Prim. This 
 forms the most romantic part of the tale, and perhaps 
 the least successful. The authoress feels that in order 
 to develop one side of her hero she must thrust him 
 into a stormy sea of adventure, but for reasons not 
 difficult to understand she lacks that particular kind 
 of melodramatic gift which can make us thrill with 
 interest and sympathy at the recital of wild and 
 daring deeds. Released from the captivity which 
 he did not deserve, but at least with the satisfaction 
 of knowing that he had helped Brigit Parflete to 
 escape from the gravest peril, the hero returns to 
 
 56 
 
John Oliver Hobbes 
 
 England to become the secretary of Lord Wight 
 and to be exposed to the delicate flattery and 
 sentimental attention of Lady Fitz-Rewes. Then 
 comes the news that Parflete has committed suicide, 
 and Robert Orange's chance arrives at last. He 
 marries Brigit, of course, but there is an ominous 
 note of warning in the concluding pages. Parflete, 
 for purposes of his own, mainly because he was a 
 failure and an outcast, had been persuaded to get 
 himself out of the way, and to spread rumours of 
 his death. There is a cloud, therefore, resting on 
 the happiness of Robert Orange and Brigit Parflete 
 which darkens the vista of their hopes. It is for 
 the sequel to enlighten us. 
 
 In such a novel as this, however, the story goes 
 for next to nothing in comparison with the brilliant 
 pictures, historical or imaginary, with which its 
 course is illustrated, and the careful delineation of 
 the principal characters. John Oliver Hobbes is not 
 one to hurry through her work, or to give us mere 
 careless outpourings of idle hours. The style, sparing 
 in epigrams, is elaborated with conscientious zeal, the 
 study which has served as groundwork for her story 
 is, perhaps, a little too obvious and explicit. Here 
 and there a critic might complain that the attention 
 given to detail has overpowered the main interest in 
 the work, just as some fastidious readers might 
 quarrel with the authoress for extracting her plot 
 out of diaries and letters, and giving us quotations in 
 Greek and Latin, German, Italian, and French. There 
 are worse faults, however, than conscientiousness, 
 
 57 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 and we are too much under the dominion of the 
 slap-dash and the extempore to be aught but grateful 
 for signs of deliberate industry. Even when she 
 touches so contemporary a figure as Disraeli, she does 
 not miss her mark. Take, for instance, the following 
 passage, in which the great Conservative Minister 
 is giving the benefit of his experience to the hero. 
 
 "At eight and twenty," said Disraeli, "I, too, 
 thought that compromises were nearly always im- 
 moral, as well as dangerous ; but, unless I am mis- 
 taken, you will find that the best ordered life is that 
 which shows the largest record of compromises. One 
 need not be a monger of principles — that is a vulgar 
 trade, and always leads to moral bankruptcy — but 
 one can be, as it were, a worker in principles, and set 
 one's mind as a piece of mosaic. You have insight, 
 but you should acquire flexibility. Flexibility is the 
 great thing. In your book it appeared in the guise 
 of cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism is a beautiful 
 word, if it be understood to mean liberty for all men ; 
 when, however, it means, as it seems to mean in the 
 case of a great Republic I could name, an indis- 
 criminate hospitality, you will find that the host will 
 wake one morning to find himself shivering in naked- 
 ness on his own doorstep ! " 
 
 And although here and there one feels that Mrs. 
 Craigie has wandered into uncongenial fields when 
 she describes the storm and stress of the Carlist 
 rising, there is a picture of a great Carlist leader's 
 death — the Countess des Escas — which seems to ring 
 with the true note of dramatic strength. 
 
 58 
 
John Oliver Hobbes 
 
 §3 
 
 Every one knows the trite doctrine about 
 sequels. It rests on the general principles enun- 
 ciated in copybook headings that one cannot 
 return in a colder mood to what was originally 
 devised in a high state of feverish energy, and that 
 the thing that was once well done is only weakened 
 by a well-intentioned successor. Three years after 
 producing "The School for Saints," Mrs. Craigie 
 returned to the same theme, introducing anew the 
 old characters, taking up the threads that had been 
 left loose in her earlier novel. Was she wise or not 
 wise ? Is " Robert Orange " as much of a success as 
 " The School for Saints " ? To such questions there 
 will be different replies, according to the standpoint 
 and prepossessions of the inquirer. " Robert Orange " 
 is not so good a novel as " The School for Saints." 
 It has less of the constructive capacity, and is deficient 
 here and there in interest. Though exceedingly care- 
 fully written, it is not quite so well written as the 
 earlier book, for what in " The School for Saints " 
 was a rapid, rythmical account of certain incidents 
 bearing on the evolution of a plot, is now replaced by 
 a patient, unresting, ceaseless analysis of motives and 
 character, which occasionally strikes one as forced 
 and jejune. 
 
 Nevertheless, if one demands from a sequel the 
 completion and rounding-off of a given task, " Robert 
 Orange " is as necessary for the understanding of the 
 
 59 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 tale as is " The School for Saints." A problem is 
 indicated in the first work, and we are led to a sort of 
 conclusion. In the second book we discover that the 
 first solution was false, representing only a stage in 
 the development, not the final term. What was it 
 that " The School for Saints " suggested ? A dreamy, 
 earnest, meditative character in the person of Robert 
 Orange who, with every pre-disposition to mysticism, 
 was transformed by his experience into an indi- 
 viduality not only romantic and chivalrous, but 
 emotionally human. He gave every promise of 
 becoming a philosopher to start with, a philosopher 
 of that exalted and ascetic type which it is the glory 
 of the Roman Catholic Church to produce in its 
 highest converts. Then life stepped in, eager, ardent, 
 full of wise saws and modern instances, and the 
 embryo saint disappeared awhile, partly as a man of 
 action in the Carlist War, much more as a lover, 
 capable of a great passion for Brigit Parflete. Well, 
 so far the moral clearly was that certain highly 
 wrought abstract natures can be shaken out of their 
 dreams by the pressure of great events. It is not the 
 final moral, however, and those who have read only 
 " The School for Saints " have obtained an inadequate 
 grasp of what was in the authoress's mind. If the 
 lover worsted the saint in the first book, the saint 
 conquers the lover in the second. We now see that 
 we were wrong in our estimate of those dim, original 
 ancestral forces which made Robert Orange what he 
 was. There are natures in which you cannot wash 
 out the primitive autograph, the original dye. Once 
 
 60 
 
John Oliver Hobbes 
 
 given seriousness, introspection, and a choice and 
 cultured intelligence, the accidents of life will not do 
 much to alter or divert the innate tendency. Through 
 a wider experience of life, the man returns once more 
 to his first love. He begins as a young and ardent 
 visionary. He ends as a matured and deliberate 
 mystic. The soul is fuller for what it has gone 
 through, but its first bent is unchanged. The wheel 
 has come full circle. 
 
 All this no reader will discover until he takes the 
 two books together, and in this sense the sequel is no 
 unnecessary and unwelcome appendix, but an integral 
 part of a design. What is it that John Oliver Hobbes 
 finds interesting in her outlook on humanity ? Many 
 things, no doubt — worldly characters, fashionable 
 follies, vacillating moods, the constant permutations, 
 the self-excuses, the inconsistencies of the feminine 
 sex, the arrogant selfishness, the all-grasping egoism 
 of the male. But these are the outer courts of the 
 temple of humanity, places where they sell doves and 
 exchange money and barter and wrangle for gain. 
 The central problem is the relative influence and 
 authority of a human love and a divine call, and to 
 this eternally interesting theme Mrs. Craigie, through 
 both these books, returns again and again. In 
 Robert Orange's case, his love for Brigit Parflete was 
 ruined by his self-consciousness, by his clear-eyed 
 vision of the ends of life for a rational creature. It 
 he had been built otherwise he might have become a 
 cynic, or a statesman, or a pessimistic philosopher, 
 but being what he was — an ardent mystic, recognizing 
 
 6i 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 the superior claims of another world — he became a 
 priest. Love is enough, according to the poet. It is 
 never enough in the view of some natures, for it, too, 
 belongs to the things of earth, which perish in the 
 using. 
 
 The story is in reality a working out of this theme. 
 Robert Orange, believing that Wrexham Parflete is 
 dead, marries the little girl of seventeen who was 
 Parflete's wife, only to discover that the husband is 
 still alive. For one brief, mad moment it looked as 
 if the hero had chosen other gods to worship, had 
 petulantly and earnestly asked whether he, too, might 
 not be allowed to bow the knee in the house of 
 Rimmon. The answer came, direct and unmistak- 
 able. No ; the ordinary marriage joys of those "who, 
 hand-in-hand, face earthly life" were not for him. 
 The revelation of Parflete's continued existence 
 reaches him on the first day of his married life, and 
 drives him at once from his bride's companionship. 
 What is left to these two ? Nothing, except to return 
 to the original suggestions of their respective tem- 
 peraments. So far as one can understand Brigit 
 Parflete at all — and I confess she is very difficult to 
 comprehend — she is a born Bohemian of the higher 
 type, a gipsy with a predestined career under tents, an 
 actress with a passion for her art. When life seemed 
 to offer her another ideal she grasped it, not because 
 it was the foreseen object of her dreams, but because 
 she was in love with a man. When that was no 
 longer open to her she relapsed back to her original 
 instincts, and became an actress. So, too, did Orange 
 
 62 
 
John Oliver Hobbes 
 
 find that though ordinary humanity had its claims, it 
 could be superseded by a diviner vision. Once, when 
 he saw Brigit act, his soul was in revolt against his 
 inescapable fate. Once, too, despite all the teachings 
 of his religion, he fought and killed his man, the 
 Marquis of Castrillon, in a duel at Dunkirk. Then 
 the veil drops on the miraculously preserved saint. 
 As asceticism wins its prey, the supersensual love 
 becomes superior to that of throbbing hearts and 
 shaken, vacillating nerves. 
 
 In this human chronicle, mainly a sermon, and 
 only incidentally a novel, everything is kept subordi- 
 nate to the principal issue and the chief characters. 
 Yet Mrs. Craigie is artist enough to crowd her canvas 
 with figures, each happily designed, although not 
 quite intelligibly carried out. Lord Reckage is ad- 
 mirable, although we do not know whether to call 
 him a politician with a due sense of compromise, or 
 an absorbing egotist of the superior worldly type. 
 The other male characters are shadows, with the ex- 
 ception possibly of Disraeli, who, whenever he speaks 
 — and that is rarely enough — says something memor- 
 able and characteristic. But the ladies in Mrs. 
 Craigie's novel are far more interesting, with happy 
 touches of temperament and clever distinctions of 
 nature, suggested rather than accurately defined. 
 Lady Sarah de Treverel — a character who might 
 have walked out of one of Disraeli's own novels — is 
 full of promise, but such development as she is 
 capable of is dwarfed by the superior interest of 
 Robert Orange's abortive marriage. Lady Fitz-Rewes 
 
 63 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 we made acquaintance with before, in " The School 
 for Saints," a figure pale and nebulous, but yet 
 truly drawn. Agnes Carillon, a prim and correct 
 soul, who never seems to suspect the depths of her 
 own nature until appealed to by the masterful love- 
 making of the painter, David Rennes, is another 
 clever sketch, of which we should like to know more 
 than the authoress deigns to tell us. And the general 
 management of the story is excellent, full of careful 
 work, too elaborate in analysis, too deficient in action, 
 but uniformly sober, restrained, literary. It is odd 
 sometimes how the mere fact that Disraeli himself is 
 introduced as a character influences the authoress's 
 style. There are pages and chapters which recall 
 " Henrietta Temple," or, still more, " Lothair." 
 "Robert Orange" is a book that every one can 
 talk of, especially those who have not taken the 
 trouble to read it from first to last. Full of 
 admirable passages, it is by no means easy to read, 
 not only because of its analytic extravagance, but 
 because we catch the note of didacticism rather than 
 the free, happy exercise of an artistic gift. But it 
 will repay perusal, even for the first time, and be 
 much better appreciated on a second or a third 
 reading. 
 
 64 
 
John Oliver Hobbes 
 
 §4 
 
 In none of her books has John Oliver Hobbes 
 worked more obviously according to a Meredithian 
 model than in "The Serious Wooing." For in a 
 fashion it repeats George Meredith's "Lord Ormont 
 and his Aminta," not by any slavish process of imi- 
 tation, be it understood, but in accordance with the 
 free work of an artist inspired by a particular in- 
 fluence. The differences between the two works are, 
 of course, manifold. Lord Ormont is a figure of 
 capital importance, but the namby-pamby nobleman 
 whom Rosabel finally makes up her mind to marry 
 after her escapade with Jocelyn Luttrel in Mrs. 
 Craigie's book, is to all intents and purposes a 
 nobody. Moreover, Lord Ormont saw the necessity 
 of his Aminta's running away according to Meredith's 
 somewhat paradoxical management of events, but no 
 one saw any reason why Rosabel and Jocelyn should 
 make fools of themselves, except the two people 
 immediately concerned. It is the treatment of the 
 episode — for episode it is, and nothing more — which 
 recalls to the reader of " The Serious Wooing " the 
 great novelist of the latter part of the nineteenth 
 century. There is the same belief in the inexpugnable 
 rights of a fiery manhood and joyous womanhood, 
 the same indulgence towards the heroine who kicks 
 over the traces. There is even the same kind of 
 nomenclature, for "The Piper and his Rosabel" — 
 the authoress's own description of the infatuation of 
 
 6s F 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 the loving pair — is phraseology coined in George 
 Meredith's mint. 
 
 From all which the judicious student will gather 
 that " The Serious Wooing " is the history of a revolt 
 against social conventions. Lady Shortclough, the 
 heroine, otherwise known as Rosabel, has been married 
 in her teens to a doddering peer, who subsequently, 
 becomes imbecile. She is the most beautiful of her 
 sisters, and the most impetuous. Caroline had done 
 her duty by marrying an extremely wealthy com- 
 moner, Odo Ceppel ; Susie behaves quite unexception- 
 ably in accepting the advances of a solemn young prig, 
 Lord Beaulieu ; the brother, Sir Courtenay Bagot, 
 is just an ordinary club-haunting, coarse-minded man 
 about town, rather sensible according to cosmic 
 standards, but by no means distinguished. Out of 
 all this family of complaisant worldliness Rosabel 
 represents, as it were, the hectic emotional flush, the 
 bright spot of termagant passion bound to come to 
 grief, as all cold-blooded people would say — bound, 
 at all events, to achieve her fate, as would be the 
 judgment of the psychologist. Lord Shortclough 
 meant nothing to her but the matrimonial chains. On 
 the other hand, Jocelyn Luttrel, the brilliant Balliol 
 scholar. Socialist, Democrat, " viewy " prophet of an 
 impossible millennium, was the emblem of all that life 
 contained of the real and the ardent. To Jocelyn, 
 in due course, Rosabel gives her heart, and although 
 she is but a girl when the story opens, she grows by 
 her stormy experience into a woman who at last 
 knows her own mind. Of course she is all wrong 
 
 66 
 
John Oliver Hobbes 
 
 according to every mundane and ethical standard. 
 Nevertheless, as the authoress suggests, "humanity 
 only subsists on the condition of not reflecting about 
 what is essential to its existence." If Rosabel is ob- 
 stinate in thinking about the essential, while all those 
 around her spend most of their time and their anxiety 
 in decently living for the appearance, for the pheno- 
 menal, for the non-essential, we know, at least, on, 
 which side the authoress intends us to give our 
 sympathy. In a dreary desert of commonplace hypo- 
 crisy, the splendid fool is the king. And Rosabel is 
 at least, a splendid fool. 
 
 Think what she does. She makes up her mind, 
 owing, it must be confessed, to her lover's strong 
 initiative, to leave her home, and join her fortunes 
 with Jocelyn Luttrel, " without benefit of clergy," in 
 his house at Queen Anne's Gate. Then discovering 
 that her wild and precipitate action was likely to 
 ruin her young sister's chances, she returns home 
 again. Meanwhile her lover, bound on a Socialistic 
 mission, has been forced to go to Marseilles, is there 
 wounded in a street row, and is laid up for some 
 time, railing against the inconstancy of woman. In 
 England Mrs. Odo Ceppel so manages affairs that 
 Rosabel neither receives any letters nor is able to 
 despatch them. Hurt, baffled, and bewildered by 
 the long silence, which she cannot understand, the 
 heroine, whose imbecile husband is now dead, accepts 
 and marries Jim Roxall — Lord Roxall — one of those 
 faithful, uninteresting, much-enamoured swains, who 
 usually figure as a sort of drab, colourless background 
 
 67 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 to the purple patches of romance. Then Jocelyn 
 Luttrel returns, and, if the expression may be 
 pardoned, all the fat is in the fire. The long course 
 of deception, by means of which the lovers have 
 been kept separate, is revealed, and Rosabel promptly 
 deserts her new home in the company of Jocelyn. 
 He has lost all his money in his Socialistic campaign, 
 but that is no matter. When last we hear of the 
 pair, the lady is learning to sew and to play the 
 guitar, and they both look like angels. The mise-en- 
 sc^ne of this apotheosis is, of course, foreign and not 
 English. Anything is possible on the Continent, 
 albeit that it would be inconceivable in West Ken- 
 sington, or even Bloomsbury. 
 
 Rosabel is obviously a splendid fool, living at the 
 dictates of sentimental emotion, the victim of her 
 hysterical moods. Her misfortune is — it is also per- 
 haps her justification — that she belongs to a family 
 who had thoroughly accepted the normal standards 
 of hypocritical decency, which are what we so often 
 call social laws. In painting this social milieu Mrs. 
 Craigie is at her best. Carrie Ceppel is an admirable 
 figure, a lady of the world, thoroughly satisfied with 
 herself and her ideals, accepting falsehood and 
 chicanery, if they help her to keep the outer surface 
 of things untroubled, incapable alike of a great hatred 
 or a great love, a puppet with a scheming brain, who 
 can be malevolent if she is crossed. Her friends are 
 like her. Archie Wardle is an agreeable dinner 
 companion with a microscopic intelligence, but very 
 safe on the main questions of social life. Jim Roxall 
 
 68 
 
John Oliver Hobbes 
 
 is a more pathetic picture of middle-aged imbecility, 
 who is led by the nose in his conduct of life because 
 all his limited fund of energy has been expended in 
 a desire to make Rosabel his wife. Sir Courtenay, 
 Carrie's brother, is the man who uses his experience, 
 Bohemian or otherwise, to keep things externally 
 decent and right, perfectly heartless, but with no 
 small amount of worldly wisdom. Odo Ceppel, 
 Carrie's husband, is a pompous Croesus, whose only 
 instinct is to avoid even the slightest appearance of 
 a scandal. Where Mrs. Craigie has been less success- 
 ful is in the contrasts she paints to those normal 
 types of modern civilization. Her Socialistic con- 
 spirators are not so accurately seen. Beylenstein is 
 only a shadow ; Mrs. Torrington-Seafeld does not 
 impress us with her reality ; even the hero, Jocelyn 
 Luttrel, strikes us only as a passionate man, who by 
 some accident has become imbued with democratic 
 ideas, but who might equally be a Byronic poet, an 
 impressionist painter, or a shock-headed journalist. 
 He represents revolt, that is all — the particular form 
 is quite immaterial. Nor do we always understand 
 his immense attractiveness for Rosabel. 
 
 But the book shines because it describes in brilliant 
 fashion a characteristic page of modern social life, 
 elaborated with no little spirit and vivacity. It is but 
 a slight sketch, after all, an episode, as we have said, 
 but the hand of the artist is throughout. The purely 
 epigrammatic vein is subordinate to the interest of the 
 story — that is one of the lessons which Mrs. Craigie 
 has learnt in her literary experience. Nevertheless, 
 
 69 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 the book is full of good things. " In human rela- 
 tionship," says the authoress, "troubles come not 
 from the deficient heart or ill-matched hearts, but 
 from ill-matched visions." Or again, " Most of the 
 world's sorrow is caused by the blindness of the 
 unimaginative. They happen to be in the majority, 
 and the rest have to spend their lives wincing." Nor 
 is there any lack of truth in the following aphorism, 
 paradoxical as it appears : " Reasonable people live 
 half in the grave." In sentences like this we recog- 
 nize again the authoress of " Some Emotions and 
 a Moral," and " The Gods, Some Mortals, and Lord 
 Wickenham." 
 
 §5 
 
 Mrs. Craigie is certainly an adept at titles, 
 and knows how much of interest and significance 
 may be suggested by a well-chosen name. If 
 the title is fantastic, it at least provokes curiosity ; 
 if it does not at once explain itself, there is 
 all the more reason why the book should be read, 
 in order that the meaning may be understood. 
 " Love and the Soul Hunters," the phrase which 
 Mrs. Craigie has selected for the title-page of her 
 newest romance, catches the attention with all sorts 
 of indefinite possibilities. We frame to ourselves a 
 story dealing with the wild beasts of prey which 
 destroy all simple and primitive emotions — the lust 
 of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of 
 life, encompassing, like blood-sucking vampires, the 
 
 70 
 
John Oliver Hobbes 
 
 unhappy soul which clings resolutely to its one 
 childish faith, its sole pearl of great price, the secret 
 of all existence — Love. Or else, going back to the 
 grand words of the Prophet Ezekiel which Mrs. 
 Craigie has borrowed for her own purposes, " Thus 
 saith the Lord God, * Will ye hunt the souls of My 
 people ? ' " we imagine a stern, indignant, heartfelt 
 satire on the poison of worldliness, on the growing 
 deterioration of the higher spiritual life. 
 
 To point a moral is, however, not Mrs. Craigie's 
 way. She will portray for us the outsides of things 
 and let us draw our own lessons if we choose. She 
 will not use the emotional stop or drag out the vox 
 humana ; tragedy and the passion of things strike 
 her possibly as savouring too much of melodrama 
 and the transpontine theatre for her cultivated and 
 literary style. As one turns over the pages of " Love 
 and the Soul Hunters" the reader becomes aware 
 once more of what he already discovered for himself 
 in " The Serious Wooing " — that the authoress 
 shrinks from letting the acid bite too deep. If we 
 ask to be interested in her characters she tells us 
 that in this life of ours the secrets of personality are 
 never to be revealed. Even to a keenly observant 
 eye, men and women are mostly puppets which dance 
 before us, sometimes amusingly, sometimes tragically, 
 but never reveal the underlying motives for their 
 actions, never disclose the wires, so to speak, on 
 which their febrile activity is hung. In the present 
 novel, for instance, Prince Paul and Clementine, the 
 hero and heroine, act precisely as we should see two 
 
 71 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 people act at some fashionable resort on the Conti- 
 nent, giving us clear-cut, superficial impressions, and 
 leaving us with a kind of wonder whether, if we knew 
 them better, they would interest us more strongly. 
 The brilliant panorama of existence, that is what 
 Mrs. Craigie gives us — the doings of a smart set, the 
 external vicissitudes of a brilliant career, all the bright 
 colours, all the elegant manners, all the polite conver- 
 sational epigrams, all the admirably fitting frock- 
 coats, all the latest creations of the fashionable 
 modiste. Now and again — and that is what makes 
 us read on with a hope which is frequently disap- 
 pointed — she gives us just a passing glimpse of the 
 souls of these creatures, and we begin to realize that 
 they are not fashion-plates, but full of red blood. 
 And then the good moment of clear-eyed intuition 
 goes, and we see once more the phantasmagoria, the 
 eternal outside display, the well-dressed dolls, who 
 talk irreproachably, and who deliberately shun all 
 chances of intimate knowledge. One thinks of that 
 brilliant chapter in Mr. Walter Pater's " Studies of 
 the Renaissance," in which he sums up his attitude 
 towards art. Every one knows the passage: "To 
 such a tremulous wisp constantly reforming itself on 
 the stream, to a single sharp impression, with a sense 
 in it, a relic, more or less fleeting, of such moments 
 gone by, what is real in our life fines itself down. 
 It is with the movement, the passage, and dissolu- 
 tion of impressions, images, sensations, that the 
 analysis leaves off — that continual vanishing away, 
 that strange perpetual weaving and unweaving of 
 
 72 
 
John Oliver Hobbes 
 
 ourselves." When we read "Love and the Soul 
 Hunters" we seem to see this philosophy adapted to 
 novel writing. "To burn always with this hard, 
 gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy is success in 
 life. Failure is to form habits." Yes, that is Mrs. 
 Craigie's ideal in this novel. She, too, desires to burn 
 always with a hard, gem-like flame. If we are dis- 
 appointed, it is, no doubt, our own fault. It is absurd 
 to ask an artist to give up a familiar attitude because 
 we venture to think that a genuine philosophical 
 analysis, a deeper study of temperaments, ought to 
 yield more fruitful results. 
 
 Possibly, to those who look below the surface, 
 there may be some deeper verity yet to be apprehended 
 by patient minds. Who are the soul hunters .? They 
 are, I suppose, the various people who represent the 
 dominant passions of the age — the people who know 
 no other ambition except to make money ; the people 
 who have no other wish except to shine in society ; 
 the people who believe that marriage is a matter of 
 convenience, or else a device for saving impecunious 
 fathers from ruin. Prince Paul of Urseville-Beylestein, 
 the younger son of a reigning house in some small 
 European principality, has devoted himself to a life 
 of pleasure, of easy love-making, of luxurious enjoy- 
 ment of the good things of this world. An American 
 millionaire, Mr. Cobden Duryee, has, of course, shown 
 the omnivorous capacity of his race in buying up for 
 his personal profit all profitable concerns and trans- 
 muting everything to gold. So, too, La Belle 
 Valentine, Madame de Montgenays, is a lady who 
 
 71 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 left her husband because she wanted colour and 
 variety, and had the craving artistic instinct to live 
 every moment at full pressure. Mr. Gloucester, the 
 husband whom La Belle Valentine abandoned, is a 
 well-meaning but fatuous old gentleman, who has 
 grown sordid and mean through the increasing 
 pressure of poverty. Dr. Karl Felshammer, the 
 Prince's private secretary and confidential agent, 
 thought that everything was possible for a hard, 
 grasping, resolute ambition. He is a man of the 
 saturnine order, a schemer, one who bends the wills 
 of men and women to his own purposes, not because 
 he is in reality stronger than they, but because, 
 unlike them, he knows his own mind. All these 
 personages are in a sense soul hunters. They bring 
 with them the gross, the material, the worldly to 
 overpower all that there is of finer spiritual essence. 
 And the soul they hunt is embodied in the form of 
 Clementine Gloucester, the daughter of Madame de 
 Montgenays, the daughter also of Mr. Gloucester, 
 dating from the period when these two ill-matched 
 people tried to live together, and before they parted 
 on their several ways. 
 
 If this be at all the right way to interpret Mrs. 
 Craigie's romance, it is also pertinent to observe that 
 in this assiduous soul-hunting it is the soul which 
 eventually wins. Madame de Montgenays, La Belle 
 Valentine, discovers that the real absorbing interest 
 in her life is, after all, the future of her daughter. 
 Mr. Gloucester, in his turn, discovers that the one 
 being likely to save him from his steady decline 
 
 74 
 
John Oliver Hobbes 
 
 towards bankruptcy is Clementine, with her steady 
 belief in primitive simplicity, in the sanctifying 
 influence of real love. In the same fashion, also, 
 with the others. Each one is tried by the touchstone 
 of Clementine, and fails and succeeds accordingly. 
 Dr. Felshammer, for instance, who thought he would 
 win the lady simply because he wished to, realizes in 
 the sequel that there are objects which an overweening 
 ambition and great strength of character cannot 
 secure. The hero, in the last place, Prince Paul, 
 receives a greater discipline still. Fickle, light- 
 hearted, changeful, plunging from one amour into 
 another, as is the habit of dispossessed princes with 
 nothing to occupy their minds, he suddenly encounters 
 in Clementine a force of character, a sincere tempera- 
 mental strength, to which he has eventually to yield. 
 He thought it easy, poor man, to unite her to himself 
 in a morganatic marriage, while to please his mother 
 he officially wedded the Princess Marie. But Clemen- 
 tine refuses to see matters in this light. She will 
 have Paul for herself alone, and if she cannot win 
 him thus she will manage to do without him. And 
 to the astonishment of his friends and acquaintances, 
 to the surprise, above all, and resentment of the 
 jealous Dr. Felshammer, who — and this is the sole 
 melodramatic touch in the novel — does his best to 
 shoot him, Prince Paul of Urseville-Beylestein gives 
 up all his dynastic aims, studies finance under the 
 tutelage of Mr. Duryee, and marries Clementine. 
 The soul hunters have done their best or their worst. 
 Not only, however, has the soul escaped from the 
 
 75 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 snare of the fowler, but it has actually succeeded in 
 converting some fowlers to a better frame of mind. 
 
 Yet it is a question whether, interpreted in this 
 way, the novel gains or loses. As I understand the 
 matter, Mrs. Craigie has a pious horror of a moral, 
 and most literary critics will agree with her. But let 
 us distinguish for a moment. Nothing is more frigid, 
 more pretentious, more absurd, than a so-called work 
 of art which is only a sermon in disguise. We do 
 not want the artist to improve the occasion. It is 
 not his business, and he always does it ungracefully. 
 Is it, therefore, necessary for a novel to touch lightly, 
 with butterfly frivolity, on the outside forms of life 
 and character, to be merely vivacious, to be content 
 with epigrams, to paint the soulless, the external, the 
 superficial ? Surely the better artists have never 
 been satisfied with such an ideal. Thackeray in 
 his cynical moods came nearest to it, and some of 
 those who have followed the steps of the master seem 
 to have bettered the instruction. But the real 
 problem of the artist is how to make people live — 
 and no mere reproduction of their talk, no description 
 of their dress or their demeanour or their habits, no 
 recounting of the incidents of their career, will 
 necessarily give them vitality. Something must be 
 suggested, by methods which the great artists keep 
 as their own secret, of the inner life of these figures, 
 of the conflicting motives which make them act, of 
 the underlying tendencies which drive them this way 
 and that. To paint men and women with this sure 
 intimate touch is to believe in the real elements of 
 
 76 
 
John Oliver Hobbcs 
 
 personality, and to disbelieve in the momentary 
 impression. The worst of it is that in " Love and the 
 Soul Hunters " Mrs. Craigie seems to have deliberately 
 forfeited the true privileges of the psychologist in 
 order to escape theexasperating tedium of the moralist. 
 The position v^hich Mr. Walter Pater explained to us 
 in the celebrated epilogue to his "Studies of the 
 Renaissance " may be the attitude of one species of 
 criticism towards art, but it can never disclose the 
 spirit in which the artist himself works. Whether he 
 be painter, dramatist, novelist, or musician, he can 
 never content himself by transcribing phenomena, 
 the appearances and vicissitudes of things. His 
 study lies in the secret workshop of reality. 
 
 §6 
 
 It is one of the melancholy experiences of life, 
 that too much cultivation is as bad as too little. 
 Mrs. Craigie has a practised literary style — delicate, 
 spiritual, refined. She can paint the sprightlier 
 moods with unerring hand. The glancing light and 
 shade of elusive emotion have no secrets for her. She 
 gives just the right touch to the thousand and one 
 bagatelles and foibles of humanity, the bubbles which 
 burst on the surface of social life. There is the flash 
 of iridescent hues, when the sunlight kisses and gilds; 
 then the vision fades into emptiness and nothingness. 
 In the moment alike of fugitive glory and of the 
 blankness which succeeds, Mrs. Craigie says neither 
 too much nor too little. She catches what the fleeting 
 
 17 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 instant expresses — no less and no more. And that 
 is why, in her shorter novels, " The Serious Wooing," 
 for instance, she is so admirable, and in her best 
 comedies, like " The Ambassador," she so often hits 
 the right tone of exquisite frivolity. All this makes 
 for, as it comes from, refinement, culture, literary 
 training. Her taste is secure because it is educated ; 
 her charm more persuasive because based on self- 
 discipline. But there is a penalty which waits, like a 
 shadow, on this fair and smiling distinction. The 
 further you push back Nature the less will it come 
 when you call for it. The springs of life are so far 
 away that you cannot retrace your steps to the virgin 
 source. For cultivation is artifice, and artifice is the 
 death of Nature. 
 
 Some fate like this seems to have come upon 
 Mrs. Craigie when she wrote " The Vineyard." It is 
 not a story of fashionable life, but of unfashionable. 
 We no longer move within a four-mile radius from 
 Charing Cross, but pass our time in a provincial town, 
 never far away from the fields and the hedgerows. 
 You cannot walk in country lanes or across meadows 
 in diaphanous muslins. In the High Street of Yafford 
 it is better to have brown boots and wear a tailor- 
 made gown. Heaven forbid that I should deny that 
 Mrs. Craigie can write about the country. She can 
 write about most things with delightful skill, and here 
 and there are pages in " The Vineyard " full of a 
 picturesque grace which is quite pastoral. " Hedged 
 fields of barley and wheat, fields of heather and 
 clover, fields of long grass and newly mown hay 
 
 78 
 
John Oliver Hobbes 
 
 ranged in soft ridges " — has she not painted them all, 
 together with the agricultural work they entail, " the 
 measured rhythm of quiet industries and humble 
 lives ? " But it cannot be said that Mrs. Craigie is a 
 part of all she sees. Can she draw the average in- 
 habitant of a provincial town ? Is Federan really 
 a solicitor in Yafford ? Are the ladies, the Misses 
 Leddle, Mrs. Tonge, Mrs. Revere, Mrs. Marblay, 
 Mrs. Rowland, and the rest, truly set in a frame of 
 Cumberborough and Franton .? Are they ? Or does 
 there cleave to them some reminiscence of London 
 pavements — in the men some glimpse of a polished 
 boot and a tall hat, in the women some faint, far-off 
 aroma of Bond Street, a scent of the boudoir, not of 
 the hedgerow ? Of course, these figures, which our 
 authoress handles so deftly, are quite provincial in 
 their tastes and limitations. So far as she can, Mrs. 
 Craigie makes them as narrow and prejudiced 
 and parochially minded as they can be. But their 
 language often bewrayeth them. The heroine, Jennie 
 Sussex, is, I suppose, born to belong to the centre of 
 things, and, therefore, can never move easily in the 
 circumference. But what of Federan ? Listen to his 
 talk — in two contrasted moods — 
 
 "*I wonder,' he said abruptly, 'whether the man 
 who ruined himself to buy the pearl of great price 
 ever came to detest the sight of the pearl? To 
 possess one perfect thing means great happiness, no 
 doubt, but a number of imperfect things gives one 
 more choice, more variety, more liberty in living, and 
 they are less responsibility. . . . ' 
 
 79 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 " A man is never happy with the second best, or 
 the third best, or indeed with anything less than the 
 ideal he is capable of imagining. So long as he can 
 imagine something better than what he possesses 
 already . . . he's bound to be miserable." 
 
 What is this ? Is it the talk of a Yafford solicitor, 
 even though he may be as handsome as Apollo ? Or 
 is it Browning in a tweed suit — Matthew Arnold 
 soliloquizing in a country lane ? 
 
 And now, having got rid of this preliminary 
 difficulty, the rest is fairly easy work. The main 
 trouble is that Mrs. Craigie should have placed her 
 characters in a provincial scene. But when once we 
 have accepted this, the characters themselves stand 
 out with no small measure of psychological power. 
 The hero, Federan, is a man whose ambition is too 
 great for the conditions of the life in which he 
 finds himself. He is a man of great personal charm, 
 as well as of ability. In Mrs. Craigie's view he is a 
 provincial struggling to belong to the great life of 
 the Metropolis. In the view of most critics, I should 
 imagine, he is just the reverse. He might rather be 
 described as a metropolitan confined through some 
 strange whim of the authoress within the narrow 
 bounds of a country existence. But in either case 
 the tragedy is the same, and, as nearly always happens 
 in similar cases, a man so situated stoops, as he 
 thinks, to conquer ; resigns himself to ignoble acts in 
 keen anticipation of future success. The world, no 
 doubt, is full of Federans, and we should judge them 
 less hastily if we knew them better. The tragic fate 
 
 80 
 
John Oliver Hobbes 
 
 of a good intention is always with them ; they mean 
 well, and they hope that the end will justify their 
 means. Gerald Federan, with artistic tastes and a 
 good deal of general culture, is anxious not only to 
 marry Jennie Sussex, a slight, willowy girl of rare 
 charm and beauty, but to provide her with a home 
 which is worthy alike of her and of him. It is for 
 this reason that he lends an ear to rascals like 
 Coolidge, who induce him to invest other people's 
 money and his own hopes in a nefarious commercial 
 scheme. Success cannot be won on lines like these. 
 The Scripture remains eternally true, that no one can 
 do evil in the hope that good may come. Federan 
 engages himself, it is true, to Jennie, who is as much 
 in love with him as he is with her ; but no happiness 
 can be theirs, nor can their engagement endure. The 
 hero is a finely drawn character. And Jennie, too, 
 the bright, intellectual daughter of a disappointed 
 scholar, is a personality sketched with much acuteness 
 and insight. Yet she is not quite convincing, because 
 she is either too old in judgment for her years, or too 
 young in emotion for the mature strength of her will. 
 So everything gees wrong in this badly arranged 
 universe. Federan is practically ruined by his friend 
 Coolidge ; Jennie finds out that the man who has 
 made such pretty love to her can, for selfish reasons 
 of his own, also whisper soft nothings in the ear of a 
 fantastic heiress, Rachel Tredegar. It seems as if 
 Mrs. Craigie had a certain cynicism as to the value 
 of those innocent affections which we call " calf-love." 
 Jennie and Gerald Federan are young lovers — a 
 
 8i G 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 fairly matched pair, both equally delightful for the 
 human eye— but their affection is not allowed to 
 reach its proper development. Jennie herself, for 
 wilful reasons of her own, presumably marries — for 
 the actual denouement is left to our imagination — a 
 young artist, Allan Helmyng. Federan, in his turn, 
 is left to wed the wealthy heiress, Rachel Tredegar, 
 whose fortune no doubt will supply him with the 
 luxurious life for which he craves. There is also an 
 honest yeoman, called John Harlowe, who has for 
 years been devoted to the heroine. But he, too, has 
 to abandon his primary ideals and content himself 
 with the mediocre attractions of a commonplace Lena 
 Simpson. Everywhere we see the failure of youthful 
 aspirations, the shipwreck of first loves. Why is our 
 authoress so cynical ? George Meredith could devote 
 a whole chapter to the most blithe and infantile out- 
 pourings of calf-love in his " Richard Feverel." But 
 Mrs. Craigie belongs to the Metropolis in this as well 
 as in other matters. The dreary maxim that marriages 
 should be dictated by common sense is potent with us 
 all ; we are apt to forget that the world belongs to 
 the young, and especially to the young lover. Perhaps 
 this, too, is the reason why one of the most successful 
 characters in " The Vineyard " is the wholly artificial 
 and fantastic Rachel Tredegar, a woman who had 
 never discovered anything real in life, and who is 
 forced to accept a somewhat artificial hero as the 
 nearest representative of the real. Or is the moral 
 quite different ? Are we bidden in this novel to see 
 how the men and women who perish are those who 
 
 82 
 
John Oliver Hobbes 
 
 have never lifted their eyes to the hills ? " He 
 beholdeth not the way of the vineyards," which Mrs. 
 Craigie quotes, comes close to that other text, " They 
 are of those that rebel against the Light ; they know 
 not the ways thereof, nor abide in the paths thereof." 
 Federan, indeed, may be said to have sinned against 
 the Light. But is this true of Jennie, or of John 
 Harlowe, or even of Allan Helmyng ? 
 
 83 
 
LUCAS MALET 
 
LUCAS MALET 
 
 § I 
 
 THE secrets of a personality are of undying 
 interest in all literary criticism. How a writer 
 came to assume his or her particular standpoint, what 
 is the weight that he or she attaches to different 
 elements in character and in life, — these are the subtle 
 questions which a critic is bound to consider, often 
 with considerable misgiving, always with keenest 
 attention. The result is, perhaps, not wholly satis- 
 factory — indeed, in the conditions of the case it can 
 hardly be so. For hypothesis plays a large share, 
 and we have to make up by imaginative insight for 
 what the author is unable or unwilling to tell us. 
 The intellectual growth of the writer who chooses 
 to be known by the name of Lucas Malet is a 
 fascinating and also a perilous study. Apparently 
 she has wavered a good deal in the aims and objects 
 of her art ; or, perhaps, as her art has grown to its 
 maturity, certain primitive tendencies have become 
 obscured, while others have taken on firmer outlines. 
 Lucas Malet is, of course, the daughter of Charles 
 Kingsley, and is known to her friends as Mrs. St. 
 Leger Harrison. We must not be misguided by 
 
 8; 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 these personal details. It would be easy, for 
 instance, to exaggerate the fact that she is Charles 
 Kingsley's daughter. Something, no doubt, remains 
 to her of that strenuous and eager personality who 
 played so decisive a part in the religious history of 
 his time. But if we seek to find the elements of 
 so-called muscular Christianity in the work of his 
 daughter, we shall certainly go very far astray. He 
 was a preacher ; and she, too, once or twice — and 
 notably in "The Wages of Sin" — has a distinct 
 tendency to moralize. But of all the authors who 
 have taken a considerable place among our modern 
 novelists, Lucas Malet is the last to display before 
 us a didactic impulse. She is too much of an artist 
 for that 
 
 If we are to find influences derived from her 
 father, we must seek for them in a much more 
 subtle fashion. One of the questions raised by 
 any new religious conception is the interpretation 
 we give to saintliness and a saint. There is little 
 doubt as to the saint's character from the point of 
 view of Charles Kingsley. He must be, above all, 
 a man — not a whimpering ascetic. He must face 
 the problems of life with all the self-reliance caused 
 by strong muscles and a resolute will. He must 
 not shrink from evil because he lives in a world 
 where the tares grow up equally with the wheat. 
 He must "be in the world, and yet not of the 
 world," according to the pregnant sentence which 
 the Author of the Christian Faith has bequeathed to 
 us in the writings of St. John the Divine. But if 
 
 83 
 
Lucas Malet 
 
 the saint is, first and foremost, a clear-sighted, 
 practical man, he is bound to take human nature as 
 he finds it, and not be afraid of some of its vagaries. 
 At all events, any one who comes after a preacher 
 of muscular Christianity will not hesitate to view 
 human nature on all sides, to see the shadows as 
 well as the high lights, to observe the ordinary 
 mundane defects as well as the occasional spiritual 
 intoxications. I use the lasc word advisedly, because, 
 from the standpoint of the successor, the doctrines 
 of muscular Christianity are bound to exercise a 
 chilling influence on spiritualistic leanings. Part, no 
 doubt, of the character of the saint is his mysticism 
 — a very notable part, as all history testifies. But 
 muscularity will always react upon mysticism, and 
 indeed destroy some of its spiritual fibre. Devotion 
 can assume two aspects. If we try to imagine the 
 saint prostrating himself on his knees before some 
 idol of purity and ethical excellence, we can imagine 
 him clinging either to the symbol or to the thing 
 symbolized. In the latter case, he is a true mystic ; 
 he knows that earthly things are but the shadows 
 of the divine. He now and again, in some rare 
 moment of emotional ardour, pierces through the 
 coarse envelope, and attains to the absolute ideal. 
 The things which he sees, touches, handles, feels, are 
 emblems and shadows, and the truth which they 
 figure is the only real thing in the whole universe. 
 But a different temperament is apt to envisage these 
 things differently. It is not given to all of us to be 
 sufficiently abstract in our mood or metaphysical in 
 
 89 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 our thoughts to escape the pressure of the actual 
 world. The symbol remains, at all events, as some- 
 thing tangible and real, something that can be 
 worshipped with any amount of emotional zeal. 
 Thus the worshipper becomes, as we phrase it, the 
 idolater. Instead of a dimly seen but clearly 
 imagined truth lying behind the veil, we have the 
 actual object of worship — the symbol, the idol, 
 occupying the whole of the mind. And, unless I 
 am wholly mistaken, Lucas Malet's careful and con- 
 scientious study of the spiritual, the unseen world, 
 as found, for instance, in "The Carissima," and in 
 "The Gateless Barrier," tends more and more to 
 materialism — an imaginative handling, not of the 
 abstract and the imperceptible, but of the things 
 which can only be its outward husk, crust, and 
 emblematic figure. 
 
 That is, it seems to me, the development of Lucas 
 Malet's art, as we look at it from " The History of 
 Sir Richard Calmady" back to "Mrs. Lorimer." 
 For no one can doubt that when she wrote "Mrs. 
 Lorimer," Lucas Malet was occupied with a purely 
 spiritualistic problem ; the theme of " Mrs. Lorimer " 
 is nothing less than that passion for spiritual per- 
 fection, that thirst after righteousness, which can 
 only invade the souls of the elect. It is a beautiful 
 piece of work, and, if we look at it as contrasted with 
 some of that which was to follow, full of the most 
 delicate refinement. The same thing, within limits, 
 is true of " A Counsel of Perfection." Yet even in 
 the earliest work of all there were signs of a spirit 
 
 90 
 
Lucas Malet 
 
 other than the spiritual, the beginnings of a study of 
 the corporeal. Take, for instance, that beautiful book 
 which some students might call the best of anything 
 which Lucas Malet has ever done, the novel entitled 
 " Colonel Enderby's Wife." Mrs. Lorimer, although 
 she disliked the suggestion of physical pain, accepted 
 her cross of suffering, and thereby gained redemption. 
 In " Colonel Enderby's Wife " the heroine is one who 
 not only shrinks from physical pain, but learns also 
 to shrink from the man who suffers thus physically. 
 Colonel Enderby is every inch a hero ; he, too, might 
 be called a muscular Christian, a Charles Kingsley 
 saint. In middle age he falls in love with a young 
 and beautiful girl, and realizing that the one chance 
 of his life has come to him, he marries her. And 
 then comes the tragedy. In her attitude to her 
 husband, Jessie Enderby, although she never means 
 it, is heartlessly cruel. Brilliant, fascinating, delight- 
 ful, Jessie can only really be affectionate as long as 
 the sun shines ; once let the shadows fall, and the 
 sunlight disappear in clouds of gloom, and Jessie's 
 whole nature shrinks from pain as something alien 
 to her conception of things. Her husband is doomed, 
 but when she married him she did not accept a view 
 of life which included patient self-sacrifice. The 
 part of the wife was to be the butterfly, certainly not 
 to be the mute witness of suffering which she could 
 not cure. She cannot cleave to a man who is bound 
 to suffer, and thus the novel becomes a study of the 
 mental effects of physical pain. What possibly dis- 
 guises this real issue is that we are at once surprised 
 
 91 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 and pleased to find a woman novelist who can really 
 draw a fine and consistent male character. Colonel 
 Enderby is a man ; and such creations are rare 
 enough in the works of our women novelists. George 
 Eliot, of course, with that instinctive sympathy of 
 hers with everything in the world, however alien 
 from her own natural feelings, could draw men — 
 even commonplace men — with a truth and reality 
 which appealed to every reader. Mrs. Humphry 
 Ward finds it more difficult to do so ; we think 
 shudderingly of the hero of " Eleanor." But Lucas 
 Malet, as Colonel Enderby testifies, is catholic and 
 tolerant enough to understand the best elements of 
 a masculine personality. Let us give her this credit, 
 at all events, and recognize that it is not only in the 
 width of her canvas that she excels among contem- 
 porary authors. She has desired to see life steadily, 
 and see it whole; she is not satisfied with special 
 studies and genre pictures. Her novels are always 
 a microcosm of the large and varied life we know. 
 But because Colonel Enderby is a man, and might 
 have been drawn by a man, we must not forget that 
 the total outcome of the novel has for us another 
 interest. It is interesting because it indicates the 
 beginning of that stress on the corporeal and the 
 material which will afterwards meet us in more re- 
 pulsive forms in Richard Calmady. 
 
 And now comes another feature in Lucas Malet's 
 art-work, the growth of another tendency closely 
 concerned with that which we have already discussed, 
 and bearing most significant fruit. Long ago it was 
 
 92 
 
Lucas Malet 
 
 stated by a German critic that the penalty attaching 
 to the artistic career is an acquaintance with the 
 sordid, ugly aspects of life. The artist, said Winckel- 
 mann, must steep himself in the sensual and the 
 corporeal, in order that his knowledge may be ade- 
 quate in dealing with the various forms of sensual 
 and corporeal life. Lucas Malet's work distinctly 
 raises the question how far the abnormal should be 
 an object of artistic study. There is no doubt as 
 to the view which the authoress herself holds. Not 
 only do her works conclusively show her opinion, but 
 here and there are curiously characteristic passages 
 which destroy the possibility of doubt. I take, for 
 instance, this description in *' The Wages of Sin " of 
 James Colthurst, the painter and artist, who is the 
 hero — 
 
 " Colthurst revelled in incongruities. There was 
 unquestionably a sinister vein in him, a rather morbid 
 enjoyment of all that is strange, jarring, unexpected, 
 abnormal. Some persons, indeed, have gone so far 
 as to accuse him of a love of actual physical deformity, 
 and a relish of horror for mere horror's sake. No 
 doubt his power of appreciation was widely catholic, 
 his view of beauty an original one. Yet he invari- 
 ably, as far as I could see, rejected that which was 
 unnatural or unsavoury, unless the presentation of it 
 formed so essential a part of his subject that to omit 
 it was to spoil the point of the story. If it was a 
 necessary part of the drama, he portrayed it with an 
 honest and fearless hand. And that he probably 
 enjoyed doing so I am not prepared to deny. In 
 
 93 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 truth, the number of artists — in any department — 
 who have the gift of calling spades spades, rather 
 than agricultural implements, is a very small one. 
 To ask them not to exercise this distinguishing gift, 
 when they do possess it, is a trifle hard. A trifle 
 useless, too, perhaps ; for, unless they are contemptibly 
 false to the demands of their own talent, they certainly 
 will not listen to you." 
 
 If we may venture to draw any deduction from 
 a passage like this, it seems quite clear that we have 
 already the genesis amongst Lucas Malet's works of 
 such a study as " The History of Sir Richard Cal- 
 mady." For it must not be supposed that because 
 this novel was only published in 1901 the preliminary 
 studies had not been executed long before. Some of 
 the characters appeared in earlier books. The frame 
 of mind which justifies the later creation has already 
 grown to something like maturity in the first works. 
 All sorts of physical peculiarities are insisted upon 
 by Lucas Malet, in a fashion which is sometimes 
 irritating — Mr. Mainwaring, in " Mrs. Lorimer," sticks 
 out his under lip ; Kent Crookenden, in " The Wages 
 of Sin," protrudes his under jaw nearly every time 
 he appears ; James Colthurst, the hero of the latter 
 book, always stammers, and the author can never 
 forbear illustrating the constancy of this stammer. 
 These are little matters, perhaps, and yet if the 
 artistic study of life is found to exhibit certain 
 tendencies in the direction of the corporeal, the 
 physical, the material, they are straws which show 
 which way the wind is blowing. Meanwhile, let 
 
 94 
 
Lucas Malet 
 
 us not forget that "The Wages of Sin" is an 
 exceedingly fine novel. You may call it a sermon, 
 if you please; it is certainly the nearest approach 
 to a sermon which you will find in Lucas Malet's 
 works. But the merciless analysis of the weak- 
 nesses of James Colthurst's personality, the slow 
 drawing together of those threads with which the web 
 of Destiny is woven, the irresistible onrush of Fate 
 and Nemesis, all these are depicted with a master 
 hand. It is a big, masculine work — inclusive, im- 
 pressive, pervasive. Lucas Malet has proved herself 
 a keen, acute, persistent psychologist ; but she is not 
 satisfied with a merely psychological analysis. Not 
 only do her characters live, and, indeed, almost 
 oppress us with the vivid sense of their reality, but 
 she knows how to group them in a story, how to fill 
 every part of her canvas with figures of cleverly 
 graduated interest and importance. She is a real 
 artist, though, as I venture to think, she takes a view 
 of art which, in the long run, empties it of all its ideal 
 values — a strong, true, consistent artist, and, if I am 
 not mistaken, posterity will acclaim her, among the 
 ranks of our contemporary women writers, as one 
 of the greatest, equal in power, though of very 
 different merit, to Mrs. Humphry Ward, comparable 
 even in some respects with George Eliot. 
 
 95 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 §2 
 
 What is a Grotesque ? Lucas Malet chooses to de- 
 scribe "The Carissima" by this sub-title. A grotesque, 
 I imagine, is something fantastic, whimsical, ludicrous, 
 antic, and full of a conscious extravagance. There is no 
 doubt that in some of its features Lucas Malet's story- 
 conforms to such a definition. Its central incident is 
 decidedly fantastic ; the tragedy in which it issues is, 
 to say the least of it, extravagant. But is Lucas 
 Malet playing with us the while? Is she laughing at 
 something — some contemporary tendency of fiction, 
 some phase of art — which appears to her to be 
 worthily treated with ridicule? Or has she merely 
 heard an ingenious and unlikely story, which she has 
 taken as the scheme for skilful embroidery and 
 enlargement — a Christmas tale, saved from its proper 
 entombment in the pages of a December magazine, 
 and lifted by sheer literary cleverness into a perma- 
 nent interest? No doubt it is only critical dulness 
 which confesses itself at a loss to discover the 
 meaning of a writer ; but to a good many of us, I 
 fancy, the answers to the foregoing questions are by 
 no means obvious. 
 
 Perhaps the reader is intended to take comfort 
 from a passage which occurs on the very last page. 
 The man to whom the story is told ventures to ask 
 what is the meaning of it all. Hammond gives an 
 enigmatical reply. " Ah, my friend ! " he cries, " are 
 you still in that embryonic stage of thought wherein 
 
 96 
 
Lucas Malet 
 
 you still feel about after a reason, still have the 
 youthful hopefulness to ask — Why ? Cease to do so. 
 It will only make you irritable, for you will receive no 
 answer. In nine hundred and ninety cases out of 
 every thousand, if there is a why at all, it is among 
 the secret things, absolutely beyond the range of the 
 understanding of purblind man. Therefore lay to 
 heart that profound saying of a great artist and a 
 great novelist, * Ineptie consiste h, vouloir conclure.' " 
 Very well. We must suppose, then, that Lucas 
 Malet believes in a modest acquiescence in the actual, 
 accepts a positivist theory of literature, and dislikes 
 all notion of preaching a moral. Nevertheless, there 
 are passages in her book which now and again 
 disturb us in this view. Here is the story. Con- 
 stantine Leversedge is a man who has made money 
 in South Africa. Long ago he had been engaged 
 to Charlotte Perry, the daughter of commonplace 
 parents, of whom the father, we are told, has a 
 resemblance to a rat, and the mother to a moon-faced 
 clock. It was a perfectly recognized thing, this 
 engagement, and the whole object of Leversedge's 
 South African journeys was to enable him to accumu- 
 late that agreeable competence which would make 
 " the Carissima," Charlotte Berry, a contented wife. 
 Fate, however, has something to say to these human 
 arrangements, first, by making the heroine a young 
 woman of the newer type, a dabbler in literature and 
 art, infatuated with the idea of a personality whose 
 free development is the object of her assiduous 
 attention ; and secondly, by giving the hero a 
 
 97 H 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 wonderful and unique experience in South Africa, 
 which alters his whole career. 
 
 The man, in his travels across the veldt, has 
 encountered an encampment of dead people, dead of 
 want and starvation, with the one living thing repre- 
 sented by a dog, who has, not obscurely, been keeping 
 itself alive by unholy banquets on the dying. Lever- 
 sedge, as the impersonation of justice, puts the dog to 
 death, and is ever afterwards haunted by its ghost. 
 Shades of " Snarleyow " hover across the page, and 
 each day and night as they pass make the unhappy 
 hero of this escapade a still more nervous and 
 excitable madman. Perhaps the one thing that 
 would do him good would be to have the pure love 
 of some sweet and sensible woman, who would take 
 upon herself the burden of his fate and nurse him 
 back into healthfulness and sanity. But Charlotte 
 Perry is not that woman, because her empty head is 
 filled with the notions of her own literary importance, 
 and because, as a matter of fact, she does not love 
 Constantine Leversedge at all. If she loves anybody 
 it is Anthony Hammond, the narrator of the story, 
 and the intimate friend of the hero. Here, then, we 
 have many strains of complicated interest. There is 
 Hammond's position, to begin with, recalling the situa- 
 tion sketched in Browning's " A Light Woman " — 
 
 *' So far, as our story approaches the end. 
 Which do you pity the most of us three — 
 My friend, or the mistress of my friend 
 With her wanton eyes, or me ? 
 
 ■C * * ))• * 
 
 98 
 
Lucas Malet 
 
 And I — what I seem to my friend, you see ; 
 
 What I shall seem to his love you guess ; 
 What I seem to myself, you ask of me ? 
 
 No hero, I confess." 
 
 No, Anthony Hammond is not a hero, that is 
 quite clear, although he tries to persuade Charlotte 
 to marry his friend, and advises us, in the epilogue, 
 to accept the actual. Fate had put him into an 
 awkward position, and all we can say is, that perhaps 
 he did his best. 
 
 The story goes on to its melancholy close, and 
 seems to point the way to a second moral. At the 
 side of Charlotte Perry there is a particularly worth- 
 less specimen of journalist and editor, called Percy 
 Gerrard — editors and journalists are notoriously 
 conscienceless, and are consequently fair game — who 
 induces Charlotte to believe that she is throwing 
 herself away and marrying a lunatic. At his advice, 
 apparently — for the dhiouement is not quite explicit 
 — a trick is played upon the unhappy Leversedge at 
 the very moment when he thought he had won his 
 bride. A wretched mongrel is let loose on purpose 
 to howl, and Charlotte goes through the farce of 
 pretending to see greeny-yellow eyes coming up the 
 lawn. The plot is only too successful, for Con- 
 stantine Leversedge, thinking that his projected 
 marriage had brought the girl he loves under the 
 shadow of his own curse, commits suicide the self- 
 same night. Of course, the mistake was in supposing 
 that a union between so discordant a pair could ever 
 be a success. But is there not the least little bit of 
 
 99 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 a moral peeping out from the following passage, 
 whereof the meaning seems to be that true love cures 
 both the follies of a self-intoxicated girl and the 
 mania of a neurotic patient ? Anthony Hammond 
 is reflecting how excellently he had managed in 
 counselling the heroine, after all, to marry the hero. 
 " Was not Charlotte," he asks, " delivered from 
 dreams hardly less grotesque and ghastly — from false 
 standards of taste, of fashion, from false refinements, 
 false intellectualities, from a silly pursuit of decadent 
 eccentricities ? Was she not beginning to compre- 
 hend what an exquisite, yet very simple solution — 
 notwithstanding the prurient purities of contemporary 
 feminine novelists and reformers — true love offers to 
 the much-vexed question of the sexes ? Beginning 
 to comprehend how deep-rooted and terrible, yet 
 how exceedingly pretty a pastime is the love of an 
 honest man — and many men are honest, after all, you 
 know — for an honest woman ? " 
 
 I do not suppose that this is the point of the 
 story — if it has a point — for once more the reader is 
 bewildered by quite a new idea, a question, this time, 
 of the general legitimacy of certain forms of Art, 
 which the authoress suggests in her last chapter. If 
 there is one thing more than another which Lucas 
 Malet has done, it is to select a rare and eccentric 
 incident and make it the basis of her story. Yet this 
 is how she genially laughs at herself " For there is 
 no denying, Art does fix the mind, unwholesomely, 
 unscientifically on extremes, upon all which lies 
 outside ordinary experience. It runs alternately to 
 
 100 
 
Lucas Malet 
 
 the Golden Houses of the Gods and the Newgate 
 Calender, to the lives of the saints and the chronique 
 scandaleuse for its subject-matter ; and with none of 
 these things, when you come to think of it, have we 
 most of us any more than a neighbouring acquaint- 
 ance. It accentuates every side of the great human 
 problem almost to the verge of lunacy. It per- 
 sistently exalts the abnormal as against the race, the 
 variation as against the type." This, we are left to 
 imagine, is Lucas Malet's apology for, or rather her 
 condemnation of, her " Modern Grotesque." It raises 
 enough weighty questions in all conscience — amongst 
 others whether the grotesque comes under a form of 
 Art at all. 
 
 If Lucas Malet's preface were taken too seriously, 
 the inevitable inference would be that " The Gate- 
 less Barrier" is intended for an allegory. For 
 according to that somewhat solemn and unnecessary 
 introduction, "The Gateless Barrier" is borrowed as 
 a title from some Eastern texts, which are never 
 explanatory, but only suggestive — that is to say, like 
 the Socratic dialogues, they raise a problem, but do 
 not give any positive solution. Suggestive, em- 
 blematic, symbolical an expression like " The Gateless 
 Barrier" undoubtedly is, for it brings to the mind 
 all the vague notions which surround the dim after- 
 world, the region of spirits with or without bodies, the 
 inexplicable bourn from which no traveller returns. Or 
 
 lOI 
 
?:;; The. Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 inasmuch as in Lucas Malet's story one traveller does 
 return in a very effective fashion, and nearly becomes 
 materialized, we may take it, if we please, that the 
 authoress suggests one indestructible link which unites 
 this world and the next — the link not of passive con- 
 sciousness, nor of active thought, but simply of love. 
 It is through love that Mr. Laurence Rivers brings 
 back to some semblance of corporeal existence the 
 ghost which haunts the family seat of Stone Rivers, 
 and, here and again, carelessly, as it were in passing, 
 Lucas Malet puts in some conversations between the 
 young hero and his dying uncle, which appear to 
 bear out the assumption that the novel is a tract on 
 the permanence of soul and the everlasting potency 
 of love. But I do not believe that the authoress 
 merely intends to treat her theme in such a dull 
 didactic fashion. She plays with the supernatural as 
 an artist, treating the weird shapes of ancestral 
 phantoms and beautiful illusive ghosts as materials 
 for imagination and fancy, as data out of which to 
 create an interesting and fascinating story. 
 
 In this object she is certainly successful. You 
 can take up " The Gateless Barrier " at nightfall, and, 
 like Dr. Johnson over " Evelina," you can spend a 
 good many hours towards cockcrow. The novel 
 carries you along easily, naturally spontaneously, 
 because of its lightness of touch, its quaint vrai- 
 semblance, its original handling of familiar themes. 
 There is no strain or effort here; if there were it 
 would mar our pleasure. The ingredients of the 
 story are simple enough. There is a descendant of 
 
 102 
 
Lucas Malet 
 
 an ancient English house, Laurence Rivers, who, on 
 the other side of the Atlantic, marries a typical, 
 smart, well-dressed fashionable American wife, named, 
 as Sir Walter Raleigh named his transatlantic dis- 
 covery, Virginia. Being the heir of a moribund 
 uncle, Laurence Rivers is recalled to the old country, 
 and is at once transplanted to a different world. In 
 Stone Rivers there is a room tenanted by a delightful 
 ghost, a beautiful young girl arrayed in the dress of 
 the beginning of the century, who wanders round an 
 old escritoire, and seems to be for ever seeking some- 
 thing hidden in its drawers. The object of the 
 ghost's search is some faded love-letters which passed 
 between her and a young naval officer in Nelson's 
 time, also called Laurence Rivers, and the direct 
 ancestor of the hero. In many senses, indeed, the 
 husband of the American Virginia is the new em- 
 bodiment of his prototype, not only bearing the same 
 name, but discovering to his astonishment, by the 
 aid of a miniature, that he is possessed of identical 
 features. All this forms an excellent fantasy, which 
 Lucas Malet knows how to develop. What more 
 natural than that the inheritor of the name should 
 be seized by a similar passion for Agnes Rivers, that 
 he should visit the room which she haunts at night, 
 that he should play the harmless device of pretending 
 to be his namesake, that he should bring his dear 
 lady-love first to talk, and then, with nervous energy, 
 strive like another Pygmalion to transmute his Galatea 
 into actual corporeal existence? By subtle touches 
 the man is shown to us as belonging in spirit and 
 
 103 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 hereditary instincts to his English stock. Some of 
 his ancestors were dreamy and emotional, such as 
 the naval officer who perished at Trafalgar. Others 
 were dreamy and intellectual, like the uncle slowly 
 dying in his room "unhousel'd, disappointed, un- 
 anel'd." But both sides of the family had the same 
 characteristics, self-centred, somewhat morbid, unlike 
 the ordinary run of Englishmen. Will Laurence 
 Rivers succeed in his task of materializing the ghost ? 
 Will he only when his goal is reached bethink him 
 of the terrible complication which all this involves 
 with the smart lady — so practical, so well-dressed, 
 so empty-headed — awaiting him on the other side of 
 the Atlantic? Or will he, despite the earnestness 
 of his ambition, fail, and, always with a backward 
 touch of tenderness towards an unforgetable past, 
 resume his conventional relations with an admirable 
 specimen of American womanhood ? There can be 
 no doubt as to the issue. Fail he will, and fail he 
 must, not only because of les convenances and the 
 dictates of conjugal morality, but because the barrier 
 is gateless, after all, and the airy fairy lady, who lost 
 her lover at Trafalgar, cannot resume mortal shape 
 in the closing year of the nineteenth century. Alas, 
 poor, dreaming hero ! Alas, poor ghost ! 
 
 There are many ways of dealing with the super- 
 natural, but there is always one insurmountable 
 difficulty. To be vividly realized the ghost must be 
 given material touches, and then it ceases to be a 
 ghost. It may keep many of the attributes of in- 
 substantial humanity. It may pass through walls. 
 
 104 
 
Lucas Malet 
 
 It may disappear before the eager eyes of the student 
 or the lover. But, apparently, by the unescapable 
 laws of its nature, it has to be subject to some very 
 material facts. It can only come out at midnight, 
 for instance. It must dread the rising of the sun. It 
 must be kept all day long cribbed and confined within 
 a narrow coffin. It must vanish at the first hearing 
 of cockcrow. In Lucas Malet's case there is no lack 
 of these material adjuncts, and the problem being the 
 relation of the ghost to its physical environment and 
 the possibility or impossibility of its being reincorpo- 
 rated, the material elements become necessarily impor- 
 tant. Nevertheless, they spoil the spiritualistic idea 
 and shock our dreams by too insistent a reminder 
 of reality. When Laurence Rivers makes his final 
 effort to win his fantastic bride, he carries her in his 
 arms across a certain threshold, and finds her body 
 surprisingly heavy. He puts before her fruit and 
 wine and fresh bread, begging her to eat, and 
 her refusal or inability to do this marks the failure 
 of the experiment. But the eerie qualities tend to 
 disappear under treatment like this. We do not feel 
 reconciled to the bread-and-wine regimen. It is in 
 some sense spoiling our dream. The ideal Agnes 
 Rivers is a creation of a brooding mind, engendered, 
 we know not how, by all sorts of hereditary cerebral 
 aptitudes, and the scene of the untasted banquet 
 reminds one of the companions of Hamlet offering 
 to strike the kingly vision with a partisan, thus doing 
 material dishonour to an immaterial monarch. Of 
 course, it is quite true, that, according to the Psychical 
 
 105 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 Society and other sapient bodies, the phantasms of 
 the dead, poised halfway between two worlds, have 
 features derived from both, but for artistic purposes 
 the fact that Laurence Rivers failed because Agnes 
 could not eat bread, and that her beautiful existence 
 had to fade away because the room which she haunted 
 was burnt down in an inopportune fire, replaces in 
 somewhat startling fashion imaginative romance by 
 brutal reality. The dream does not remain intact; 
 it comes over the borders into our waking hours, 
 and is shattered by the first touch of that triumphant 
 Virginia from the West. 
 
 " Hawthorne," said Emerson, " rides well his horse 
 of the night " — a remark as true as it is suggestive. 
 There are writers who have by nature a midnight 
 mood, a crepuscular habit of mind. There are others 
 who put it on as a sort of artistic exercise. The 
 success is often not less in the latter case, but the 
 art work is not so sure. Mrs. Oliphant wrote a very 
 remarkable story in " The Beleaguered City," but it 
 was a conscious piece of artifice. But when Haw- 
 thorne writes his romances the very texture of his 
 mind is supernatural. He will not let his readers say, 
 " This is a dream," because there is nothing to remind 
 one of the waking state. It is a question of atmo- 
 sphere, after all, and there is nothing which more 
 strikingly distinguishes artists and writers than this 
 possession of a circumambient air. Think of the 
 atmosphere of Mr. William Morris' "Earthly Paradise," 
 the heavy sensuous air of some island of the sirens, 
 where reigns the indolent and delicious passivity of 
 
 1 06 
 
Lucas Malet 
 
 the lotus-eater. Think of the eager and nipping air 
 which surrounds much of the work of Carlyle, too 
 hard and bracing, biting so sharply that it can only 
 be inhaled in gasps. Or there is the quiet, summer- 
 like, peaceful atmosphere which Emerson distils, when 
 we feel that it is good to have been born, and that 
 to breathe is happiness. More akin to our purpose 
 is the peculiar atmosphere of Hawthorne — a chilly 
 and spectral air, with flying gleams of moonlight, 
 when ordinary flesh and blood have lost their colour 
 and all the shadows have gathered to themselves an 
 added intensity. The touch of the artist here is 
 incommunicable and indescribable, the unique pos- 
 session of his singular genius. It is perhaps in this 
 respect that Lucas Malet's " Gateless Barrier " some- 
 what fails. It is not given to every one to write of 
 the supernatural as though it were supremely and 
 inevitably natural. But for the rest, the novel is an 
 admirable piece of work — skilful in manipulation, 
 interesting as a story, with a fascination of its own 
 from which one only escapes when the last page is 
 read. 
 
 §4 
 
 It strikes a distinctive note in the romantic litera- 
 ture of 1 90 1 that the novels which left the most 
 lasting effects on the popular imagination were 
 written by women. And first amongst these stands 
 Lucas Malet, for if there is one novel which domi- 
 nated all the literary product of the year, it was the 
 
 107 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 much-discussed, the fiercely criticized, the inordinately 
 praised " Sir Richard Calmady." Objections exist, 
 no doubt, to this reign of the feminine spirit in the 
 literary sphere. There is a partiality of vision, an 
 intense pre-occupation with certain aspects to the 
 exclusion of others, something still left of that angry 
 scream with which women leapt on the platform in 
 defence of their undoubted rights. But the historian 
 must take the world as he finds it, and he is bound 
 to chronicle, with regard to 1901, that the remarkable 
 element, the most obvious and noticeable feature, 
 is the resolute handling of some of the less comely 
 facts of life by the acute and penetrating intellect of 
 women writers. 
 
 How does the world look from this angle of 
 vision ? It is, above all, a world of suffering, for 
 which, in many cases, the male is responsible. The 
 problem of evil is one which has piqued the curiosity 
 and defied the intelligence of a great many philo- 
 sophical minds since the world began. But of one 
 thing we may be sure, that if ever any reasonable 
 explanation is to be attained, any ultimate harmony 
 discovered in the jarring contradictions of everyday 
 things, the secret will not be communicated to women. 
 For to them the isolated facts, the immediate data 
 are of such supreme and overmastering importance, 
 they feel so acutely the actual pain and misery of 
 each day as it comes, that the far-away, divine event, 
 the final synthesis, the patient waiting for the eluci- 
 dation of a possible plan, are apparently for ever 
 denied. Not only is the feminine intelligence more 
 
 108 
 
Lucas Malet 
 
 responsive to the actual insistent pain, but it has a 
 theory which may or may not be wholly right — 
 which is certainly right within given limits — that all 
 human suffering ultimately falls on the woman. Take 
 the case of Sir Richard Calmady. Upon whom falls 
 the pain of his misery and his wrong-doing ? Who 
 is in reality the victim of the unkind fate which made 
 Lucas Malet's hero a dwarfed, rebellious, sinful 
 apostate? It is the mother, first and before all — 
 the sweet, patient, beautiful Katherine Calmady, to 
 whom this misshapen creature was the ironical gift 
 of Heaven, and on whose heart fell every blow that 
 his reckless wrong-doing inflicted. And, in the next 
 place, it was Honoria St. Quentin, who takes up the 
 task from the mother's hands, who receives as her 
 supreme duty in life the nursing back into sanity of 
 this monstrous sport of irrational fate. All suffering 
 eventually falls on the woman — such is the lesson. 
 And, for those who embrace this doctrine with sensi- 
 tive, petulant ardour, the tragedy of this inexplicable 
 world becomes something almost too difficult to bear. 
 Observe, further, that in the angry discontent 
 naturally inspired by such a theory as this, a writer 
 claims with fierce audacity any and every subject as 
 her theme. The criticisms which have been passed 
 on "Sir Richard Calmady" have proved, amongst 
 other things, that we shall have seriously to recon- 
 sider our canons of literary judgment. To some 
 minds the abnormal is not a proper subject of artistic 
 delineation. To others the book appears unhealthy, 
 because it treats absolutely without any reserve the 
 
 109 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 coarser sides of human character. But a writer 
 claims to be judged, not in accordance with canons 
 educed by much experience out of the past, but in 
 virtue of his or her own specific performance. The 
 fundamental question is not whether we can explain 
 such or such a work according to principles acknow- 
 ledged by grammarians and scholastics, but whether 
 the total result of the work is big enough to establish 
 its own precedent. Over and over again in the 
 history of criticism, a thing has been deemed impos- 
 sible until it is done, and then the rules have to be 
 altered to suit the new conditions. What is it that 
 Lucas Malet asks of us } You must give me, she 
 would say, my theme, at all events provisionally, 
 until you see what I can make of it. You may dis- 
 like the theme. You may call it unpleasant, shock- 
 ing, immoral ; but I ask you to reserve your judgment 
 until, when the last page has been read, you can see 
 whether my creation does not find its proper place 
 in the scheme of things, and perhaps in some negative 
 fashion make for artistic beauty. What is Lucas 
 Malet's theme ? It is the moral effect of deformity 
 upon the deformed. And what is the total result 
 of her novel? It can be nothing less than this — 
 that even so terrible a handicap leaves the victim 
 at the last, with all the sufferings he has himself 
 endured and caused to others, in the first place, a 
 redeemer of his own race — for he removes the curse 
 which had hitherto rested on the family of Calmady ; 
 and, in the second place, a salient and helpful example 
 to humanity at large of how evil can be overcome by 
 
 no 
 
Lucas Malct 
 
 good. The way in which this effect is secured is an 
 example of Lucas Malet's skill, and the proof of her 
 predominant position in the ranks of English novelists. 
 I do not know whether ultimately "The Wages of 
 Sin " will not be considered a finer book than '' Sir 
 Richard Calmady/' for the last quarter of the earlier 
 novel seems to me to reach a higher level of crafts- 
 manship. But of the present work this much at least 
 must be said, that we have to go back a good many 
 years, back to the best work of George Eliot, or even of 
 Thackeray, to find its equal. That indomitable desire 
 of the Kingsley blood to claim freedom and oppor- 
 tunity of expansion has been seen in many forms, 
 not only in Charles and Henry, but in Mary Kingsley 
 the explorer, as well as in Lucas Malet. In the 
 present case, audacity of treatment and fearlessness 
 in the choice of incident are both tempered by an 
 acute perception, first of the beauty of Nature, next 
 of the beauty of character. No finer bits of scenery 
 have been drawn than meet us here and there in 
 Lucas Malet's pages. Rarely, too, has a more 
 exquisite character been portrayed than that of 
 Katherine Calmady. For here woman is shown at 
 her best, from the woman's standpoint — woman as 
 the consoler, woman as the patient recipient of all 
 griefs, woman as the inspirer, woman as the healer 
 of discords, woman as the eternal mother. Nor is 
 Katherine in any sense less the heroine of the book 
 than the poor, mutilated Richard is the hero. If we 
 hate and repudiate the one, let us at least do justice 
 to the other. 
 
 Ill 
 
12 
 
GERTRUDE ATHERTON 
 
GERTRUDE ATHERTON 
 
 § I 
 
 T^^HAT IS the essential factor in that strange 
 ^ ^ product of modern civilization — the American ? 
 It will not be the fault of Mrs. Gertrude Atherton if 
 we have any further difficulty in answering this 
 question. One of the objects which she sets before 
 herself in her novel, " Patience Sparhawk and her 
 Times '* — a novel, be it remarked, of portentous 
 length, in which the verbosity of the ordinary woman 
 struggles with the dramatic instincts of the artist — is 
 to describe for us, with scientific precision, this essen- 
 tial quality of the American, or, as she calls it, " The 
 United Statesian,"to analyze the nature of that brilliant 
 and petulant phenomenon, to diagnose its maladies, 
 to exalt to the seventh heaven its excellences. In a 
 preface addressed to M. Paul Bourget, she dedicates 
 her work to this French psychologist before all 
 others, because he has been able to gauge at its full 
 significance " the motive power, the cohering force, 
 the ultimate religion of that strange composite known 
 as the American." He is, we are told, the expression 
 of individual will. Each characteristic individuality 
 on the other side of the Atlantic has learnt apparently 
 to depend on himself or herself, finding in such an 
 
 115 I 2 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 object of devotion the total sum of faith, ethics, 
 culture, religion. Two things can result. You may 
 have, on the one hand, intellectual anarchy ; you 
 may have, on the other, a race of harder fibre and 
 larger faculties than any that has yet been realized in 
 the history of mankind. Most readers, I fear, after 
 reading Mrs. Gertrude Atherton's novel, would be 
 inclined to " stake their bottom dollar " on the first of 
 these alternatives. That, however, may be due to an 
 obliquity of vision on our part when face to face with 
 the ideals of the West. To the grandmotherly habits 
 of a European civilization, the idiosnycrasies of the 
 American are apt to suggest either the Zoological 
 Gardens or Bedlam. But, no doubt, as compared 
 with the vitalizing air of the " United Statesian," we 
 live and move and have our being in a Boeotian 
 atmosphere. 
 
 Patience Sparhawk is obviously intended to serve 
 as a representative model of a young American 
 woman. Mrs. Atherton is not very kind tp her 
 heroine, or perhaps we ought to say she is dis- 
 passionately just. The primitive and archetypal 
 force which moves her is, indeed, individual will — 
 not in the large sense in which it serves as the pattern 
 of a cosmic energy, but in the much more familiar 
 signification of wayward petulance. Patience is not 
 a nice girl, and it must have been through some irony 
 of fate that she was christened with so unfortunate a 
 name. She never sits " like patience on a monument, 
 smiling at grief," nor is her damask cheek destroyed 
 by the ravages either of concealment or of self- 
 
 Ii6 
 
Gertrude Atherton 
 
 repression. From her tenderest years she was, to say 
 the least, headstrong, for she attempted to kill her 
 mother, and was ultimately sent to trial on the charge 
 of having murdered her husband. Between these 
 two extreme points in her career her history is one 
 of ceaseless vacillation — a ''tangential" life, full of 
 the most appalling zigzags, the most audacious 
 inconsistencies. Transferred from the wilds of Cali- 
 fornia to the State of New York, she marries a man 
 for reasons it is impossible to divine — a passionate, 
 sensual, unintellectual emotionalist, whom she learns 
 to hate with uncompromising swiftness. It is this 
 man, Beverly Peele, whom she is supposed to have 
 murdered in the sequel, after experiences replete with 
 matrimonial storms. 
 
 The fact is that Patience Sparhawk, despite the 
 pre-eminent qualities of her individual will, can 
 neither decide whom she ought to love, nor what life 
 she ought to lead. She is a bit of a vagabond and 
 gipsy, when first we make her acquaintance ; then, 
 after marriage with Beverly Peele, she is what is 
 called a smart lady, always well-dressed, perennially 
 bewitching, and with the most unfortunate propensity 
 of inducing every man she meets to forget himself in 
 the intensity of his emotional ardour. Meanwhile, in 
 her own mind, she thinks she ought to become a 
 newspaper woman, and her eloquent paragraphs in a 
 society journal are, as a matter of course, a con- 
 spicuous success. Some of her more staid friends 
 try to convert her, if not to religion, at all events to 
 the temperance cause ; but they can make nothing of 
 
 117 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 this irreverent and spasmodic heroine, who is for 
 ever attempting to construct her own ethics, and 
 vacillating between the crudest materialism and a 
 worship of refined ideals. For a long time it seems 
 that she is utterly incapable of loving any man, 
 although quite inclined to persuade herself, from 
 time to time, that she has fallen in love. She has 
 a serious and practical flirtation with a newspaper 
 editor, and then, in a moment of illumination, both 
 discover that they are making fools of themselves. 
 At last the fated man arrives on the scene, and he 
 is an Irishman. Perhaps this is a moral which has 
 often been suggested to the Eastern intelligence by 
 some of the most accomplished Transatlantic critics. 
 The best specimens of American women are often, 
 we are told, in the habit of preferring men of 
 European birth to their own kith and kin. 
 
 It is little wonder that it should be so, if we may 
 accept the guidance of Mrs. Atherton. The authoress 
 does not like New York young men, and is at no 
 pains to disguise the fact. Youths of fashion in that 
 centre of modernity are hardly attractive specimens 
 of the human race, being " high of shoulder, slow of 
 speech, large of epiglottis, vacuous of expression." 
 At their worst they have a peculiarly repulsive 
 familiarity and coarseness ; at their best they are so 
 intensely wide awake, so hideously practical and 
 businesslike, that they appear to have reduced the 
 whole of existence to a rule-of-three sum. The 
 newspaper editor, to whom allusion has already been 
 made, belongs to this last variety, and he got rid of 
 
 ii8 
 
Gertrude Atherton 
 
 his illusions at the age of eighteen. No young man 
 of intelligence has respect for anybody or anything. 
 He believes in no woman's virtue and no man's 
 honesty ; his kindness is half cynical ; his outlook 
 upon life is that he must live fast and far before the 
 age of thirty ; and then — dry-rot or suicide. The 
 present age is a young man's epoch in New York, in 
 which brilliance belongs to the early twenties and 
 inexorable decay sets in at forty. 
 
 " I heard a man say the other day of another man, 
 who is only twenty-six, and supposed to be ambitious : 
 'Well, he'd better hump himself; he's no chicken!* 
 A man feels a failure nowadays if he hasn't dis- 
 tinguished himself before thirty." 
 
 Thus Patience Sparhawk, being herself an erup- 
 tive and volcanic person, naturally finds it no easy 
 task either to carve out her destiny or to meet a man 
 after her heart. There is much to teach her that 
 the only philosophy is cynicism ; everything to 
 persuade her that existence is like a comet's career, 
 to be lived through at high pressure and ended by 
 internal combustion. She is for ever playing on the 
 surface of things, despite her cleverness, and her 
 individual will consists mainly in desiring to be 
 everything by turns and nothing long. It actually 
 requires a murder trial, in which she is the accused 
 at the bar, to shake her out of her artificiality and 
 falseness — to prove to her that, despite all the 
 brilliant ^;^ de sikle smartness of New York, the only 
 solid things are self-sacrifice and love. The advocate 
 who defends her, an Irishman called Bourke, moves 
 
 119 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 heaven and earth to prove her innocence, and gets 
 his reward by awakening the dormant womanliness 
 which had been, though she knew it not, sleeping 
 within her for thirty years. And it was very nearly 
 too late, after all ; for Patience Sparhawk, accom- 
 plished mondaine, newspaper woman, well-dressed, 
 heartless doll, philosopher and pessimist, with all her 
 rare and curious experiences of unsatisfying forms of 
 life, had been strapped down into the fatal chair at 
 Sing Sing, to be executed by electricity, according to 
 the humane methods of Western civilization, when 
 Bourke brings her pardon. Perhaps we may doubt 
 whether such a feverish and impulsive heart could 
 find ultimate rest even in the arms of her eloquent 
 advocate ; but, at all events, she is saved as by fire. 
 Desperate passions, as Romeo and Juliet proved, 
 "have desperate ends," and an existence lived 
 throughout at fever-point requires remedies as heroic 
 as electrocution chairs. 
 
 Viewed simply as a novel, Mrs. Atherton*s 
 "Patience Sparhawk" is weakened by its prolixity 
 and redeemed by its dramatic close. If many readers 
 are inclined to give up a task to which they feel 
 themselves unequal after the two-hundredth page, 
 the fault does not lie so much with them as it does 
 with the authoress. Nevertheless, let them take 
 courage, for the last hundred pages are worth waiting 
 for. Nor is it right to blame Mrs. Atherton for the 
 voluminous character of her novel, except on grounds 
 of artistic effect. She is very serious, very analytic* 
 exceedingly painstaking. She wants to delineate all 
 
 120 
 
Gertrude Atherton 
 
 the inner workings of an American woman's mind, 
 and that is no easy or simple problem. But she will 
 in time, perhaps, learn that the portrayal of cha- 
 racter does not always depend on a multiplicity of 
 touches, and that the decisive lines of a great artist 
 reveal more than the most ingenious and assiduous 
 " stippling " of the amateur. Still, the book is one of 
 rare promise and power ; the thought has not yet 
 become clarified, but it is there in exuberant and 
 abounding fulness. Mrs. Atherton knows her subject 
 thoroughly, but she has not learnt to stand apart 
 from her creations and view them with that cool 
 impartiality, in the absence of which they will neither 
 attract us nor convince. She is too much a part of 
 all she has seen and heard ; and the intensity of her 
 interest makes her forget that the rest of the world 
 has too many distractions to be wholly immersed in 
 her chosen topics. When, however, all the necessary 
 deductions have been made, " Patience Sparhawk " 
 remains a novel to be read, — or, perhaps, rather a 
 document to be studied, a brilliant, analytic inquiry 
 into the baffling and scintillating paradoxes of 
 American character. 
 
 The story of two girls and one man has often 
 been told. We know quite well what will happen 
 when the two devotedly attached schoolgirls grow 
 older, especially when one is pretty and the other 
 is plain. Helena Belmont and Magdalena Yorba 
 
 121 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 are all-in-all to each other up to a certain point, but 
 that point is reached when the bewitching Helena 
 robs the less attractive Magdalena of Mr. Trennahan. 
 It is a drawback to "The Californians " that the 
 story from the beginning is so obvious — that it 
 should travel so much in a familiar track and present 
 us with mental and moral crises of so habitual a 
 stamp. But it is necessary to remember that the 
 essence of Mrs. Atherton's tales is not the story 
 they unfold, but the characters and the scenery they 
 depict. From " Patience Sparhawk " onwards, she 
 has given us types of considerable novelty, drawn 
 from the inexhaustible sources of that continent 
 across the Atlantic which is the microcosm of 
 different nationalities and races — an amalgam of 
 contradictory temperaments and tendencies. It is 
 to say nothing to tell us that once more in the odd 
 tragedies of life girl-friendships have competed with 
 masculine loves ; it is a great deal to draw for us an 
 American like Helena Belmont and a Spanish half- 
 breed like Magdalena Yorba. In such cases the 
 background is as important as the personages, nor 
 would the story be what it is but for the Californian 
 mise-en-sdne, where the perfervid civilization of San 
 Francisco stands out in relief against the luxurious 
 vegetation of an America which was originally 
 Spanish. It is in this local colour that Mrs. Gertrude 
 Atherton especially excels, although she treats it 
 with the rapid and incisive style of a journalist rather 
 than of an interested historian. Here is a character- 
 istic passage, as clever as it is petulant, as inadequate 
 
 122 
 
Gertrude Atherton 
 
 as it is picturesque : *' California is the Princess Royal 
 of her country, and at her will all the good fairies 
 came and gave her of every gift in the stores of the 
 Immortals. Then a wicked fairy came, and turned 
 the skeleton of her beautiful body to gold, and lo ! 
 the Princess who had been fashioned to bless man- 
 kind carried, hidden from sight by her innocent and 
 beneficent charms, a terrible curse. Men came to 
 kiss, and stayed to tear away her flesh with their 
 teeth." Or here is a more gracious passage : " There 
 is nothing in all the world so beautiful as California, 
 San Francisco included, in spite of whirlwinds of 
 dust and wooden houses and cobblestone streets and 
 wooden side-walks. One can always live on a hill, 
 and then you don't see the ugly things below. For 
 instance, from here you see nothing but that dark- 
 blue bay, with the dark-blue sky above it, and 
 opposite the pink mountains, with the patches of 
 light blue, and on that side the hills of Sausalito, 
 covered with willows, and the breakers down below. 
 And the ferry-boats are like great white swans with 
 long, soft throats, bending backwards." 
 
 Whatever may be the inner conditions or external 
 form of the country, three men, at all events, Hiram 
 Polk, Don Roberto Yorba, and Colonel Jack Belmont, 
 managed to make a good thing out of it. They were 
 all wealthy, although only two of them were blessed 
 with offspring. But — and that is a thing to be 
 noticed — they were all three miserable, with the 
 misery of men who had spent the best years of their 
 life in money-making, had taxed themselves to the 
 
 123 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 utmost degree in the all-absorbing game of financial 
 speculation and enterprise, and had combined their 
 hard work, more often than once, with an indulgence 
 in sensual gratifications. They all come to a bad 
 end, moreover, which shows Mrs. Atherton's sense 
 of poetic justice ; Hiram Polk and Colonel Belmont 
 dying suddenly of apoplexy or what-not, and Don 
 Roberto hanging himself with a rope made out of 
 an American flag. The last is a carefully drawn 
 figure, a Spaniard with all the pride and narrowness 
 of his race, who had made an alliance with his 
 American conquerors, and had therefrom sucked no 
 small advantage. It is his daughter Magdalena who, 
 in her relations with Helena Belmont, constitutes the 
 main feature in Mrs. Atherton's story. 
 
 The novel is not altogether a good one — at all 
 events, not good from the standpoint of "Patience 
 Sparhawk." The authoress has found a rich vein, 
 and seems bent upon working it with a certain reck- 
 lessness. Apparently she writes with ease, a gift 
 that is likely to cost her dearly if she produces so 
 much and so fast as she has done since "Patience 
 Sparhawk " won for her an interested and appreciative 
 public. In "The Californians," as in "American 
 Wives," there are signs of hurry, or else of weariness. 
 The whole of the first part is admirable, careful, and 
 deliberate, executed with a sense of responsibility on 
 the part of the authoress, and sedulous industry on 
 behalf of her theme. The multiplicity of touches 
 which reveal to us the character of Magdalena do 
 their work with excellent effect. Slowly, and with 
 
 124 
 
Gertrude Atherton 
 
 the patience which befits a novel-writer rather than 
 a dramatist, is built up before our eyes the curious, 
 shy, self-contained character of a girl, born of a 
 Spanish father and an American mother — a half- 
 breed, with some of the defects belonging to both 
 races. Magdal^na is intensely proud, like her father, 
 with a fine and consistent reserve, and a sovereign 
 distaste for all those forms of easy self-advertisement 
 which the American girl knows how to exploit to her 
 own advantage. She is plain, if not ugly, and she is 
 quite aware of the fact. She is also conscious of a 
 deeper defect — the silent misery of one who pos- 
 sesses artistic appreciation without the possibility of 
 creative power; the instinct to do and write things 
 that are beautiful, and a lamentable lack of modes 
 of expression. Careless of some of the ordinary 
 forms of amusement, she lives her inner life. Nature 
 telling her things which she cannot translate into 
 actual words ; yearning in her inmost soul to become 
 an artist, and deprived of the necessary discipline 
 and cultivation ; a half-formed creature, one might 
 say, a crude girl, full of morbid touches, thrown, to 
 her own discomfiture, in the midst of an alien race 
 that is totally without shame or gaucherie. There 
 is real tragedy in a character like this, because, of all 
 things, it is most dependent on circumstance. If 
 fate is kind, it may develop into a sweeter and 
 saner maturity ; if things go wrong, it is bound to 
 degenerate. 
 
 Unfortunately for Magdal^na, fate is neither wholly 
 auspicious nor wholly the reverse. Into her young, 
 
 125 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 ardent, but jealously controlled life comes the in- 
 evitable man, naturally a good many years older than 
 herself, for otherwise he could have no message for 
 her. Trennahan is an American of much cosmopolitan 
 experience, who has lived fast and hard in many 
 capitals, and who bears on his face some of the 
 wisdom and much of the disillusionment of such 
 tempestuous existences. But to Magdalena he is a 
 revelation, for he seems to understand her, and take 
 her out of herself. Her chances of happiness look 
 fair, for if Trennahan loves her there must be some- 
 thing in her which, carefully tended and fostered, is 
 worthy of love. But it is here that the old girl- 
 friendship with Helena Belmont arrests the possible 
 development. Helena is the exact antithesis of her 
 Spanish friend — a brilliant, beautiful, conscienceless 
 girl, utterly selfish, utterly fascinating ; a living em- 
 bodiment of what the authoress calls "the great I 
 am" of American womanhood. While Miss Yorba 
 was falling in love with Trennahan, Helena was 
 emerging from the chrysalis stage into the butterfly 
 in Paris. When she returns it is all up with Tren- 
 nahan — who, by the way, is not the most admirable 
 specimen of manhood — and all is up also with 
 Magdaldna. 
 
 So far the story advances with sure and artistic 
 steps, the contrast between the two girls is forcibly 
 drawn, and we know which is likely to go to the 
 wall. The graver, more sedate Magdalena may be 
 respected, or even admired ; the frivolous and irre- 
 sponsible Helena is sure to be loved. From this 
 
 126 
 
Gertrude Atherton 
 
 point, however, "The Californians " ceases to be an 
 interesting study, and becomes a breathless narrative. 
 Take Helena, for example. We try to get over the 
 almost incredible baseness which induces her, as well 
 as Trennahan, to persist in their love-making, despite 
 the relations which bind both the man and the lady 
 of his choice to the sad-eyed heroine. But after she 
 is engaged, the daughter of Colonel Belmont suddenly 
 gives up her lover, because — of all marvellous reasons 
 — he has a past ; while Trennahan now and again 
 tells himself, in some curious mood of introspection, 
 that, though he could not help falling head over ears 
 in love with Helena, the real companion of his soul 
 is Magdalena. Helena certainly does not improve 
 as the story goes on. She ceases to be bewitching, 
 and becomes hard and unattractive. But what are 
 we to say of the Spanish girl ? In a highly melodra- 
 matic scene she is tempted to stab Helena with a 
 dagger, not because her friend had taken her lover 
 away, but because she had given him up. Then 
 she has mournful and mad moments, in which, with 
 reckless disregard of herself and her character, she 
 lets her imagination run riot among all kinds of low 
 and unworthy lives. And at the last, in despite of 
 her Spanish pride, she accepts without a word of 
 protest the humble, whining, and repentant Trennahan, 
 who, after a lengthy sojourn in the South Seas, is 
 only too glad to come back to his first love. That, 
 we venture to think, is scarcely a right sequel to 
 the history of Magdalena Yorba. It is not for 
 nothing that an authoress draws a heroine for whom 
 
 127 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 she manages to win the interest of her readers. Those 
 who had begun to love Magdal^na, or, at least, 
 watch her career with some of the pity and terror 
 inspired by the contemplation of a tragic force, will 
 be the first to protest against her complete and utter 
 undoing. If all the elements of her story pointed 
 in the direction of tragedy, it is a pity that Mrs. 
 Atherton had not the courage to carry them out to 
 their inevitable conclusion. Magdalena is a tragic 
 figure, or nothing at all, and we do not want to see 
 her solaced by the arms of a recreant and mean- 
 spirited hero, or accepting the commonplace lot of 
 domesticity. That an acquaintance with the works 
 of Mr. Henry James should have induced her to 
 destroy her inchoate and fragmentary novels we can 
 perhaps forgive, if we fail to understand, because the 
 episode seems to represent one of Mrs. Atherton's 
 personal idolatries. But what we can neither under- 
 stand nor forgive is that Magdalena Yorba, a solitary 
 figure of woe, marked with the two obvious signs of 
 unkind fate, should cease to be a Niobe or a Rizpah, 
 and become the happy mother of a more degenerate 
 race of half-breeds than herself. 
 
 §3 
 
 The telling of the true and romantic story 
 of Alexander Hamilton is evidently, to Mrs. Ather- 
 ton, a labour of love. As an inventive artist, 
 she wrote the book which has just been reviewed ; 
 we see her in another character in " The Conqueror." 
 
 128 
 
Gertrude Atherton 
 
 Whether the authoress of "Patience Sparhawk and 
 her Times," of "Senator North," of "A Daughter 
 of the Vine," and I know not how many other 
 imaginative works of fiction, is right in choosing 
 a serious background of history for her analysis 
 of a human character, must be left to her own 
 literary conscience. "The Conqueror" is neither 
 a novel nor a page of history. It is not an essay 
 such as Macaulay might have written ; still less 
 is it purely fanciful romance. But it is a sort of 
 dramatized biography — a very difficult kind of 
 work to do, in which our authoress wins very fair 
 success. Part of the charm which surrounds the 
 personality of Alexander Hamilton depends on the 
 mystery and uncertainty of his origin. Gertrude 
 Atherton has worked at the records, and probably 
 has a right to speak authoritatively on the question ; 
 but for the average man of the street, the uninstructed 
 student, who takes facts where he can find them, 
 there are many dubious and interesting points. Once 
 upon a time, in the middle of the eighteenth century, 
 there was a girl called R.achael Fawcett, a descendant 
 of a Huguenot family, which had found shelter and 
 consideration in the Island of Nevis, in the Caribbees. 
 She married a Dane, whose name is variously spelt 
 Lavine or Levine. After a very brief experience of 
 matrimony she went home to her mother. Then she 
 met James Hamilton, a Scotch emigrant, belonging, 
 it is said, to a family in Ayrshire, and their child was 
 Alexander Hamilton. But whether Rachael ever got 
 a divorce from Levine, or whether her real name 
 
 129 K 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 might not have been Miss Lytton, has often been 
 considered doubtful. Mrs. Atherton, working on the 
 materials which she has laboriously collected, decides 
 that Rachael was indeed a Fawcett, that she never 
 got a divorce from her Danish husband, and that 
 the fruit of her union with James Hamilton was 
 consequently illegitimate. Such a view adds, without 
 doubt, to the romantic biography of a fascinating hero, 
 and it is at least as certain as the other surmises or 
 conjectures which have obtained currency about the 
 lineage of the American statesman. Alexander 
 owed a great deal to his mother — owed, in point 
 of fact, everything except a Scotch tenacity of 
 temperament ; and the more interesting the mother, 
 Rachael, can be made, the greater is the advantage 
 which accrues to the subject of Mrs. Atherton's 
 pages. 
 
 Nothing too much can be said in honouring the 
 career of Alexander Hamilton, for he was one of the 
 greatest men — the ablest jurist and statesman — of 
 the early constitutional era of the United States. 
 That he inspired George Washington is one of his 
 titles to fame ; that he practically invented the con- 
 stitution of the United States is another; that he 
 was the friend of Lafayette, and bore the brunt 
 of that insurrectionary movement which laid the 
 foundations of the American nation, is a third. 
 These things are all facts to be discovered by a 
 study of the files of the Federalist, and other 
 historical documents ; and when Mrs. Atherton 
 writes her promised book, which is to have nothing 
 
 130 
 
Gertrude Atherton 
 
 to do with romance, and is to be based solely on 
 evidence, each point, doubtless, in the brilliant career 
 of her hero will be accurately defined and tabulated. 
 Meanwhile, for the present, it is the story which 
 claims our attention — the imaginative recital which, 
 without doing any violence to history, shall, never- 
 theless, give the romantic touches to an extremely 
 original and vivid personality. Here is a boy who is 
 always precocious, or perhaps it would be truer to 
 say always mature, for there was nothing unfinished 
 or crude even about his earliest efforts. The boy 
 accomplishes with masterly ease every task which is 
 set to him. He studies literature ; but he is so good 
 a man of business that at an absurdly early age he 
 is left in charge of an important industrial enterprise, 
 in the employ of one Cruger. He is a philosopher, 
 a student, a thinker ; and yet he is, above all, accom- 
 plished in questions of finance, an economist in his 
 practical hours, a far-reaching statesman in his 
 speculative moments. Nor is this all. He is also 
 a keen soldier — a man who brings to the operations 
 of war all that rapid initiative, that quick perception 
 of facts, that instinct for divining what his adversary 
 would do, which go to the making of a great com- 
 mander. Over and over again, in the early days 
 of the War of Independence, in 1777, and in the 
 succeeding years, he showed that, if everything else 
 failed, he could have made a brilliant leader of 
 soldiers, an organizer, a disciplinarian, a military 
 hero. The prompt and rapid fashion in which this 
 youth — for, indeed, he always seemed to be the 
 
 131 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 youngest of those entrusted with important com- 
 mands — won his way to the heart and confidence of 
 Washington is a striking proof of his genius, for 
 Washington had the power of understanding men, 
 and rarely misplaced his trust. Once they had a 
 difference, but it was only a temporary phase, an 
 unimportant incident, in an almost unbroken friend- 
 ship. 
 
 In a series of brilliant chapters Mrs. Atherton 
 enables us to see how, mixed with the rare and 
 original essence of Hamilton's character, there were 
 ordinary human elements, which, though they inter- 
 fered in some measure with his success, only made 
 him the more lovable. He had a very passionate 
 temper, which his enemies — and so strong a nature 
 would naturally have several — knew to their cost. 
 His struggles with Jefferson, his various fights when 
 he practised at the Bar, his lifelong enmity with 
 Aaron Burr — these revealed the man quite as much 
 as his much-quoted papers on Constitutional subjects, 
 and his characteristic fear that the Republic he had 
 helped in creating would degenerate into a Demo- 
 cracy such as that which revealed its horrors in the 
 French Revolution. He was the idol of several 
 women, and wasted much time in their company. 
 Warmly attached to his wife, Elizabeth, the daughter 
 of General Schuyler, he yet allowed himself to drift 
 into some compromising attachments, especially, 
 according to our authoress, with Mrs, Croix. And, 
 as usually happens in these cases, it was this side 
 of his nature — the need, or the fancied need, of an 
 
 132 
 
Gertrude Atherton 
 
 Egeria — which led to his tragic end. For the man 
 who hated him, the man who pursued him with relent- 
 less though often impotent malignity, Aaron Burr, 
 Vice-President of the United States, seems to have 
 been in no small measure inspired by Mrs. Croix in 
 securing at the last his revenge. 
 
 Alexander Hamilton's life ended in a dramatic 
 episode quite in keeping with that mysterious 
 romance which surrounded his origin and lineage. 
 His career is all of a piece, and, because it forms 
 so rounded and complete a narrative, revealing 
 throughout one prevailing character, it lends itself 
 to Gertrude Atherton's purposes of "a dramatized 
 biography" better, perhaps, than any other that 
 could be selected. Aaron Burr, defeated by his 
 rival in a political contest, knew no better way of 
 executing his vengeance than by playing on some 
 of the strongest fibres in Alexander Hamilton's 
 nature. The man was a born fighter, as Aaron Burr 
 knew. He was also one who thought that no 
 personal stain could be tolerated by any of those 
 elect souls who were called to represent a nation's 
 hopes. As a matter of fact, however, Hamilton 
 particularly disliked the solution of personal differ- 
 ences by means of a duel. Yet it was by a duel 
 that he lost his life. Fixing on some insulting 
 phrase — and Hamilton was never chary of vigorous 
 expressions towards his enemies — Burr forced him 
 to meet him on the morning of January ii, 1804, in a 
 sequestered place on the banks of the Hudson River, 
 opposite the City of New York. Hamilton, who 
 
 133 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 never intended to fire his pistol, was mortally 
 wounded at the first shot, and died on the following 
 day, in the forty-eighth year of his age. His death 
 was considered a national calamity, and his enemy 
 had to flee the country. But the tragedy of such 
 an end for a man in the prime of his life and vigour, 
 with so many possibilities of doing yeoman's service 
 in the government of the United States, is one of 
 the ironies of history. Aaron Burr, the victor, was 
 a contemptible adversary, while Alexander Hamilton, 
 the defeated, was one of the greatest of Americans. 
 The disparity between the combatants and the 
 melancholy issue of the duel remind one of the 
 death of Ferdinand Lassalle, of which Mr. George 
 Meredith has made such brilliant use in his " Tragic 
 Comedians." 
 
 134 
 
MRS. WOODS 
 
MRS. WOODS 
 
 MANY artists and authors have discovered the 
 disadvantage of having done one thing 
 supremely well. To make a brilliant success with 
 an early piece of work is to handicap future efforts. 
 Every critic who has prophesied great things in 
 virtue of an initial achievement expresses disappoint- 
 ment because other productions do not come up to 
 the promised level. A painter who devises a portrait, 
 or delineates a scene which happens to catch the 
 popular imagination, is required by the public to 
 repeat endlessly his first triumph. And in similar 
 fashion the author, who is reputed to have a talent 
 of a peculiar type, is supposed to be perpetually 
 capable of effects already judged to be individual 
 and characteristic. If the further work does not 
 accord with the beginnings, if the artist — as, indeed, 
 would be inevitable in the case of any one who wishes 
 to try his strength in various fields — seeks for fresh 
 spheres of occupation, then a kind of discouragement 
 supervenes. According to the public judgment, 
 which is sometimes right, but probably more often 
 wrong, each person of mark can do one thing 
 remarkably well; other efforts are foredoomed to 
 failure. 
 
 137 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 No one has suffered this injustice more acutely 
 than that brilliant and talented woman who wrote 
 "A Village Tragedy." Margaret Louisa Woods, 
 daughter of the late Dean of Westminster, in the 
 year 1887 composed an extremely striking little 
 study of lowly lives, in which character, plot, and 
 tragic evolution were determined by a master hand. 
 In its way, " A Village Tragedy " is a ckef d'oeicvre. 
 It says neither too much nor too little. The story 
 never outwears the primary inspiration from which 
 it issued. It is conceived and executed in a single 
 burst of creative ardour. It is also sheer tragedy, as 
 the moderns are beginning to understand the term 
 — not tragedy with a purple pall, not the fate of 
 kings and queens, but the poignant, merciless dumb 
 suffering which breaks in pieces the humble lives of 
 villagers. Simplicity and strength are the two key- 
 notes. There is no sense of effort ; it is full of the 
 art which conceals art. But then comes a much more 
 difficult time in the gradual expansion of intellectual 
 powers, when the author, ready to grapple with fresh 
 problems, has to discover a new method for their 
 proper literary solution. In some ways Mrs. Woods's 
 work is comparable with that of the lady who chooses 
 to be known as Zack, and both in the one case and 
 in the other the subsequent development is a little 
 disappointing. The next novel, "Esther Van- 
 homrigh," published in 1 891, was an attempt to paint 
 on a large canvas. Moreover, the subject was one 
 which, perhaps without injustice, we might say, could 
 never be adequately treated by a woman. The two 
 
 138 
 
Mrs. Woods 
 
 Esthers fall quite within the competent grasp of any 
 clever female novelist, but the hero, Swift, the prophet 
 of bitterness, preaching in desert places with an 
 acrimony and a power largely dependent on a 
 peculiar temperament, or it may be corporeal organi- 
 zation, of his own, is a difficult figure to tackle. 
 Intellectually he might possibly be understood ; but 
 then the qualities of his brain had nothing to do with 
 his relations to the two women between whom his 
 emotions oscillated. Mrs. Woods's " Esther Van- 
 homrigh" is a finely intelligent study, but possibly 
 a little academic, wanting in the broader elements 
 of humanity. " Sons of the Sword," a much later 
 novel, issued in 1901, is a far better piece of work. 
 " Weeping Ferry " has an indubitable strength of its 
 own. " The Vagabonds," to which I shall refer later, 
 possesses characteristic qualities of its own. As a 
 novelist, Mrs. Woods affords a curious illustration of 
 the limitations of the intellect. She lives with her 
 brains, whereas most people in this complex world 
 of ours live with their bodies, or else live on their 
 emotions. Hence there is something peculiarly 
 abstract and cold in Mrs. Woods's psychological 
 analysis. Cultivation has to pay its price, and 
 reason, as we know, is only for reasonable people. 
 A great many of the obscure dramas of the human 
 soul are played in regions where an intelligence, 
 however acute, is blind. The key that unlocks the 
 human tragi-comedy is far more often furnished by 
 the heart than the head. 
 
 But Mrs. Woods is not merely a novelist ; she is 
 139 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 a real and genuine poetess. "Lyrics and Ballads," 
 which were published in 1889, revealed the existence 
 of an artist in verse, not of the modern type, but with 
 characteristics derived from the best periods of English 
 literature. In Mrs. Woods's poetry there is always 
 elevation, taste, distinction, and sometimes inspiration. 
 Here is a poem which illustrates at once her excel- 
 lences and her defects — 
 
 *• To the forgotten dead, 
 Come, let us drink in silence ere we part 
 To every fervent yet resolved heart 
 That brought its tameless passion and its tears, 
 Renunciation and laborious years, 
 To lay the deep foundations of our race, 
 To rear its stately fabric overhead 
 And light its pinnacles with golden grace — 
 To the unhonoured dead. 
 
 ** To the forgotten dead. 
 Whose dauntless hands were stretched to grasp the rein 
 Of Fate and hurl into the void again 
 Her thunder-hoofed horses, rushing blind 
 Earthward, along the courses of the wind 
 Among the stars, along the wind in vain 
 Their souls were scattered and their blood was shed, 
 And nothing, nothing of them doth remain. 
 To the thrice-perished dead." 
 
 Mrs. Woods is also a dramatist. To "The 
 Princess of Hanover," which is an experiment of a 
 peculiar kind, I shall allude presently. An earlier 
 piece of work is absolutely an Elizabethan study- 
 modelled upon Shakespeare, and reproducing, not 
 only the Shakespearian diction, but something, also, 
 of the poet's essential quality. " Wild Justice " is a 
 vigorous little drama, full of the horror which attends 
 
 140 
 
Mrs^ Woods 
 
 the development of the " King Lear " story. In a 
 remote island off the coast of Wales there is a light- 
 house owner, Griffith Gwyllim, who is the worst kind 
 of domestic tyrant. Of course the plot is laid in the 
 days when lighthouses were left in private hands, 
 and Griffith Gwyllim, partly owing to the savagery 
 of his own nature, partly, it may be, because of the 
 mental loneliness and self-absorption due to a 
 peculiarly wild form of life, acts the despot over his 
 wife and his children with a merciless hand. Both 
 wife and children have tried in many ways to restrain 
 his unforgiving cruelty, but every act and device are 
 in vain. Thfere is nothing left for the victims of his 
 unreasoning hardness except the last resource of all 
 — the wild justice of murderous revenge. Such is 
 the theme of this gloomy little piece, carried out 
 logically to its proper issue. And there is one 
 character, the eldest son, Owain, which is of peculiar 
 interest. He is a cripple, for in his childhood he was 
 thrown downstairs by his father, and never recovered 
 the use of his limbs. And because no active life is 
 possible for him, his intense and brooding mind 
 devotes itself to a close study of Shakespeare, and 
 colours every thought with images and ideas derived 
 from Shakespearian drama. It is really he who con- 
 ceives a scheme to destroy his father and persuades 
 the others to help him in its execution. Every night 
 Griffith Gwyllim visits the lighthouse, and finds his 
 way home by the aid of a lantern placed as a sort of 
 beacon to guide his steps. The coast is treacherous 
 and full of quicksands. How easy, argues Owain, 
 
 141 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 to put the beacon-light somewhere else, and so ensure 
 the father's death! Nelto, the eldest daughter, is 
 also a strongly drawn character. Shonnin, the second 
 son, is of a more shrinking and timorous tempera- 
 ment. The best scene of all in this lurid little play 
 — for the tragedy is written in six scenes — is the 
 episode in which Owain and his mother are watching 
 from their window the lights outside, and trying to 
 divine from them the course which the plot is going 
 to take. Nelto, the daughter, who is to lure the 
 father in a wrong direction, succeeds, and then, partly 
 through the agency of the conscience-stricken 
 Shonnin, does her best to rescue Griffith Gwyllim. 
 But the actual dinouement, which, indeed, is somewhat 
 obscurely described, does not really matter. The 
 whole piece is written in a truly Shakespearian spirit, 
 and the dialogue is closely modelled on that author, 
 whom, with a touch of indubitable cleverness, the 
 eldest son, Owain, is described as constantly studying. 
 "Wild Justice" is somewhat crude, but it is very 
 powerful. In its fashion it reproduces some of the 
 tragic quality which Mrs. Woods had shown in her 
 earliest piece of all. Like "A Village Tragedy," 
 " Wild Justice " logically carries out a theme of simple 
 horror. 
 
 A story which deals with "Mr. StockwelFs 
 Monstre Circus and Menagerie," together with the 
 motley figures which earn their living in his 
 
 142 
 
Mrs* Woods 
 
 unparalleled show, was sure at least of one kind 
 of criticism — it was perfectly certain to be called 
 " realistic." It was not the first time, probably, that 
 Mrs. Woods had had this epithet flung, either in 
 praise or censure, at her head. When she wrote 
 "A Village Tragedy," she was declared to have 
 dipped her pen in the colours of realism ; and, 
 although critics were at fault when her next literary 
 venture was found to be a reproduction of the 
 relations between Dean Swift and his two Esthers 
 — a subject which necessarily lent itself to a kind 
 of historical romance — they could undoubtedly fix 
 upon Mrs. Woods's " The Vagabonds " as an example 
 of that earlier method illustrated in the tale of the 
 Oxfordshire village, with its poor, frail little heroine, 
 its helpless, ignorant hero, and their hideous com- 
 panion, the idiot. There are probably few words 
 which are used in more baffling or contradictory 
 senses than the term "realism." Sometimes when 
 it is applied to certain contemporary plays it is 
 intended as a term of reproach, because they deal 
 with unsavoury facts of life, which, in the opinion of 
 the critic, ought to be decently ignored or forgotten. 
 At other times, with more scientific accuracy, it is 
 applied to the literature of actual concrete fact, un- 
 relieved by any hues of fancy, untouched by any of 
 the grace of artistic imagination. It is in this sense 
 that we speak of Zola's novels as realistic, finding 
 fault with them not so much because they paint life 
 as it is, without any ideal dreams or visions, but 
 because, in their desire to produce a photographic 
 
 143 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 presentment of reality, they neglect the very con- 
 ditions without which art itself cannot exist. It is 
 not in either of these two acceptations that the term 
 "realism" can be applied to Mrs. Woods's novels. 
 She, too, desires to paint from actual experience, and 
 " nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice ; " 
 but the data and the studies on which she relies are 
 kept distinct from the artistic structure built on these 
 foundations. Her novels are works of art, because 
 every fact and transcript from reality is held strictly 
 subordinate to the scheme with which she starts, and 
 the ideal illustration of life which is the novelist's 
 goal. 
 
 "The Vagabonds," as I have said, is a story of 
 a circus ; and we have before us in its pages a series 
 of pictures of the travelling showman's existence — 
 the petty jealousies, the crude triumphs, the humdrum 
 interests, the everyday pursuits of queer and hard- 
 working nomads. But we are not given fatiguing 
 accounts of daring acts on bare-backed steeds, of 
 ethereal flights through papered hoops, or of acrobatic 
 performances calculated to raise a thrill in the most 
 sedate and unimaginative of spectators ; the whole 
 interest of the narrative is strictly psychological, and 
 if it inculcates any moral at all, it is nothing but the 
 old familiar, habitual truth that we are all made of 
 the same flesh and blood, highest and lowest, acrobats 
 and attaches, counts and clowns. The predominant 
 figure is the middle-aged, almost senile, "Funny 
 Joe," the quipster of the ring, the comedian of this 
 wandering troupe, the man of infinite jest and variety, 
 
 144 
 
Mrs. Woods 
 
 such as is necessary, at all events, to set provincial 
 towns in a roar. It is a portrait etched in with infinite 
 tenderness. This man, Joe Morris, has married a 
 young wife, and, despite all his unvarying goodness 
 to her, she falls in love with a handsome young 
 German, a certain Fritz, who is known amongst his 
 comrades as " Frizzles.*' The clown is not immaculate 
 himself, but his trespass against the ordinances of 
 society is unintentional. At an earlier period of his 
 career he had married a handsome, commonplace 
 circus-rider, and although he conscientiously believed 
 her to be dead, she turns up as " La Belle Mexicaine," 
 to be a torment alike to her old husband and to his 
 new wife, in Stockwell's monster entertainment. 
 There is thus an intrigue on both sides ; Joe, per- 
 fectly loyal and constant to his young wife, Susan, 
 is in mortal dread lest she should discover his 
 pristine relations with Ada, " La Belle Mexicaine ; " 
 while Susan, on her part, is falling every day more 
 deeply in love with the German Fritz, and finding 
 in his youthful charms some of that joy and interest 
 of life which she had failed hitherto to discover in 
 the dingy and doglike fidelity of the middle-aged 
 clown. 
 
 There comes a time, of course, when these varied 
 threads of interest meet in a catastrophe. " La Belle 
 Mexicaine " has a lover who is a rival clown, rejoicing 
 in the patronymic of "Nobs," and this coarse and 
 unwieldy creature becomes aware of the philandering 
 that is going on between Susan Morris and Fritz 
 Hence arise fights, excursions, and alarums. Joe 
 
 145 L 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 is conquered in single combat by Nobs, and then 
 Nobs, in his turn, falls a victim to the prowess of 
 Fritz, while all the time the real agent of fate is a 
 dangerous elephant called Chang, which becomes 
 the chosen instrument for unravelling the threads 
 of the social problem that has so much upset the 
 equanimity of Mr. Stockwell's menagerie. The 
 elephant, Chang, like the sensible pachyderm that 
 he is, hates Fritz and loves Joe, and at a central 
 moment in the story, with Joe on his back, pursues 
 along the cliffs of a seaside town his enemy, the 
 handsome and insidious young German. Then 
 follows a melodramatic scene, in which Joe Morris 
 has to shoot the elephant to preserve his rival's life, 
 and both the tempter and the wronged husband, 
 seriously damaged in the encounter, become bedside 
 companions in a hospital. The story ends sadly, 
 as perhaps it was bound to do. Susan Morris, the 
 pretty, empty-headed, selfish young girl-wife, quite 
 unworthy of that immense devotion which has 
 sanctified the life of the poor old clown, discovers 
 all the facts about Joe*s early marriage from his own 
 lips, and in the sequel departs with Fritz to America. 
 La Belle Mexicaine dies, and then once more the 
 clown, twice widowed, with a heart from which all 
 the joy and interest of life have departed, resumes 
 his old monotonous existence as the humorous 
 comedian of the ring. But, although he himself 
 knows it not, he has really attained a higher level 
 of humanity through all his griefs and disappoint- 
 ments. While in the hospital he had become a 
 
 146 
 
Mrs. Woods 
 
 friend of Sister Honoria, who had nursed him 
 through his dangerous illness, and had taught his 
 simple, primitive soul some of the moral value of 
 self-sacrifice. Like everything else, however, which 
 in any sense belonged to Joe, Sister Honoria herself 
 lies a-dying. Here is the final scene, as good an 
 example as can be found of the pathos and strength 
 with which Mrs. Woods touches in the incidents of 
 her simple story — 
 
 "Joe had no heart for his usual work. He walked 
 out aimlessly up the road that the show had to travel. 
 It wound over the shoulder of one of the hills which 
 stood about the town, but presently leaving it he 
 climbed up higher and sat down on a patch of 
 heather. It was the stillest, the most lifeless time 
 of all the night, and not a sound came up from the 
 sleeping town below, where every light was ex- 
 tinguished except those in the streets and on the 
 ships in the harbour. On the height opposite him 
 two lights showed green and red. They were lamps 
 in the road, made like that to serve as landmarks to 
 ships coming in. Jim knew where they stood — it 
 was just opposite the cemetery where his baby lay. 
 He wished he lay there too. Further inland, on the 
 same hillside, another light showed, not very bright, 
 but conspicuous, because so high above the others. 
 It shone from the tower where Sister Honoria was 
 fighting her last battle. The window was open, and 
 the nurses were watching for the dawn. It was a 
 little time before Joe noticed that light, or realized 
 what it was. When he did it was as though he had 
 
 147 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 suddenly met the eyes of a friend. He was no 
 longer alone ; Sister Honoria and he were together. 
 He understood, as he had never before been able to 
 understand, all the lessons she had tried to teach 
 him. Dimly and inarticulately he felt that his sacrifice 
 and suffering, his loss, was not all loss. Through it he 
 had reached that higher world, once so inconceivably 
 remote and mysterious, in which the Sister lived. 
 He was standing by her side in it for a day, perhaps 
 only for an hour — for even now she might be passing 
 away into a still more mysterious world — but he 
 would never forget, never lose the key to it." 
 
 The whole romance — for, indeed, I can call it 
 nothing else, whatever attributes of realism may be 
 found in it — is written on this sympathetic and 
 artistic level. Although Joe is the prominent figure, 
 there are numerous other picturesque studies — of 
 Topper, the groom ; of the Miss Normans, with their 
 music-hall aspirations ; of a pathetic little child-waif, 
 called Jane ; and of Topsy, a wind-blown figure, who 
 from beginning to end has felt the moral worth and 
 dignity of the despised clown-hero. Perhaps the 
 story itself is less significant and interesting than the 
 characters, but that is surely as it should be. The 
 background on which the principal personages are 
 thrown is of little consequence ; the plot is only, after 
 all, the ancient tale of a shallow woman, and the 
 dumb, inexpressive love of a good man. But, under 
 whatever disguises of paint and rouge and feathers, 
 whatever the sordid and lowly circumstances in the 
 midst of which the characters work out their fate, we 
 
 148 
 
Mrs. Woods 
 
 find the eternal lineaments of our common humanity, 
 And if a novelist can give us this perception of truth 
 she wins, as her bounden due, our gratitude and our 
 praise. 
 
 §3 
 
 Mrs. Woods's " Princess of Hanover " is at once 
 a dramatic poem and a poetic challenge. She has 
 chosen as her subject the history of the ill-starred 
 Princess Sophie Dorothea, the Electoral Princess of 
 Hanover, daughter of the Duke of Zell. As every 
 one knows, this was the wife of that very imperfect 
 monarch, George I. of England, a wife who was 
 treated with no little cruelty as well as neglect, and 
 who revenged herself by forming a close friendship 
 with Philip von Konigsmarck, a Swedish noble- 
 man and an officer in the Hanoverian army. Apart 
 from the purely dramatic aspect of the book, Mrs. 
 Woods is a fervent disciple of Mr. Robert Bridges, 
 and the theories which he has set forth in his 
 " Milton's Prosody." To put the matter shortly, she 
 believes, as a good many of those who have tried 
 to study the history of English verse are beginning 
 to realize, that our poetry does not depend for its 
 scansion — like classical poetry — on quantity, but on 
 "stress." Hence, Mrs. Woods writes blank verse 
 which is very dissimilar from a good deal of the blank 
 verse to which we are accustomed, mainly on the 
 ground that it is not concerned with syllables, which, 
 
 149 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 after all, are an appeal to the eye, but with the root 
 principle of "stress," which is an appeal, such as 
 poetry should always make, to the ear. Mrs. 
 Woods's preface is delightful reading, because it is 
 both vigorous and combative. She complains that 
 English critics have not the slightest idea of any 
 theory of verse composition. They may or may not 
 have any idea of the doctrine of " stress," but they 
 are at least aware that the whole matter is extremely 
 debatable ground, and that the doctrines, for instance, 
 of Mr. Robert Bridges in his " Milton's Prosody " 
 are not quite the same as those of the late Mr. Stone 
 in his " Classical Metres in English Verse," and still 
 less like those of Mr. Mayor in his "Chapters on 
 English Metre." 
 
 Fortunately, we need not occupy ourselves too 
 much with contested and arguable points in dealing 
 with "The Princess of Hanover." It is a play of 
 strongly emotional interest, full of vivid characteriza- 
 tion, interspersed here and there with some graceful 
 lyrics, and belonging to that category to which the 
 whole of Swinburne's dramatic pieces belong, " literary 
 drama." Mrs. Woods deals with the story in her 
 own fashion. No one knows better than she does 
 that nearly every point in the supposed relations of 
 Sophie Dorothea with Philip von Konigsmarck is at 
 once affirmed and denied, regarded as historical fact 
 and stigmatized as historical illusion. Naturally, she 
 chooses the version which brings into the most decisive 
 contrast the character of the weak, sensual, bullying, 
 and wholly worthless Electoral Prince of Hanover 
 
 150 
 
Mrs* Woods 
 
 with that of his young, inexperienced, and amiable 
 wife, and the impetuous traits of the Swedish noble- 
 man who was a dashing cavalier, a soldier of fortune, 
 and a man of many versatile accomplishments. The 
 interest of the story of Konigsmarck is that, though 
 he flashed across the stage of the period with all the 
 undoubted traits of a real personality, no one exactly 
 knows how he came to his sudden and mysterious 
 death. His elder brother, Charles John, was a superb 
 scoundrel, who led a roving and an adventurous life in 
 various countries with very little credit to himself. 
 Philip Christopher was, if anything, more notorious 
 and distinguished than his brother. As one goes 
 down Regent Street the name Foubert's Place strikes 
 the eye, called after a certain Major Foubert, who 
 directed a riding academy somewhere near the Hay- 
 market. Now, when Philip von Konigsmarck was a 
 young man, in order to imbue him with the tenets 
 of the Protestant religion, he was placed under the 
 governor of this riding academy, and although his 
 later life does not prove that he was much influenced 
 by that Protestant faith in whose tenets he received 
 this early instruction, it is beyond question that he 
 was in no small measure associated with fashionable 
 English life towards the end of the seventeenth 
 century. 
 
 Before this Philip Christopher, in his early boy- 
 hood, had been the playfellow and companion of 
 Sophie Dorothea in the quiet gardens and galleries 
 of Zell. Then came the miserable marriage of con- 
 venience which united the young and innocent girl 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 of sixteen with George, the son of Ernest Augustus, 
 Elector of Hanover. The times were not propitious 
 for the higher morality. A standard of morals was 
 accepted for reigning princes which certainly did not 
 accord with the simplest rules of domestic ethics. 
 George was notoriously in the hands of mistresses, 
 especially the von Schulenburg lady, the grandly 
 named Ermingada Melusina, a majestic young person, 
 thrown in his path by the scheming and infamous 
 Clara von Platen. And now arrives Philip von 
 Konigsmarck on the scene. He was, as we have 
 seen, an old playmate of Sophie Dorothea. Being 
 also a fashionable young nobleman, he had, as Mrs. 
 Woods assures us, amorous relations with Clara von 
 Platen ; and part of the scheme of the drama is to 
 show how the jealousy of this latter lady succeeded 
 in wrecking the happiness of the ill-starred wife of 
 the Electoral Prince. Madame Platen lost no oppor- 
 tunity of drawing the web of her intrigue round 
 Sophie Dorothea and her friendship with Konigs- 
 marck. No one knows whether this friendship was 
 an innocent one or not. Sophie always swore that 
 it was innocent. Her lady-in-waiting, Leonora von 
 Knesebeck, added several curious reasons why she 
 was quite certain that it was so. But there can be 
 no doubt that the circumstances of the case gave a 
 good deal of colour to the ordinary suspicions of a 
 Court full of easy morals and adorned with ladies 
 of light and irresponsible manners. Poor Sophie, 
 with whom, under all conceivable interpretations of 
 the story, every one must sympathize, found in Philip 
 
 152 
 
Mrs» Woods 
 
 von Konigsmarck her one friend and champion against 
 the ostentatious libertinism, if not actual cruelty, of 
 her husband George. In Mrs, Woods's play she is 
 so stung by the unmerited reproaches that were 
 heaped upon her, by the injustice of the suspicions 
 which everywhere dogged her footsteps, and by the 
 ruthless persecution of Clara von Platen, that she 
 makes a nocturnal appointment with her lover, and 
 yields herself and her fortunes into his hands. 
 
 Then comes the strange catastrophe, on which 
 apparently no historical light will ever be shed. 
 Konigsmarck entered the palace, either owing to a 
 forged letter of Madame Platen's, as one version of 
 the story goes, or at the express invitation of Sophie 
 Dorothea, which is Mrs. Woods's account, and never 
 left the place alive. He was killed by halberdiers, 
 urged on by Clara von Platen. A certain Bernard 
 Zayer, a native of Heidelberg, declares that he saw 
 the deed done, and that the body was hidden then 
 and there in a vault and bricked up out of sight. 
 Some time afterwards, when some repairs of the 
 castle were being executed, the dreadful secret was 
 discovered. But however the lover was got rid of, 
 he certainly, as a matter of historical fact, disappeared, 
 and poor Sophie Dorothea passed the remainder of 
 her days in the Castle of Ahlden, whither she was 
 banished for her part in the affair. Naturally, the 
 most dramatic part of "The Princess of Hanover" 
 turns on Konigsmarck's midnight visit to the castle, 
 his murder by the soldiers, and the triumph of 
 Madame Platen, who is supposed in her fury to have 
 
 153 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 trampled on the face of her old lover. The story- 
 makes a fine and vigorous play, full of strong and 
 resonant verse ; but the fifth act seems to be wholly 
 unnecessary. The real drama ends with the murder 
 of Konigsmarck. The subsequent scenes, which took 
 place thirty-three years afrerwards, dealing with 
 Sophie's life of seclusion at Ahlden, form an anti- 
 climax to the vivid and stirring episodes which have 
 preceded them. 
 
 There remains the question how English verse 
 should be written — with regard to which Mrs. Woods 
 is, from the traditional standpoint, an innovator. 
 Believing, as she does, in the doctrine of quantity, 
 on which Mr. Stone is so strong in his "Classical 
 Metres in English Verse," she writes lines full of 
 redundant syllables, allowing herself in this respect 
 as much liberty as Mr. Stephen Phillips or Mr. Yeats. 
 The occasional irregularity throws out with greater 
 clearness passages of normal scansion. We get, for 
 instance, lines like these — 
 
 "Pass unobserved of the world, you being accompanied ; " 
 
 " Bloody and perilous. The electoral diadem ; " 
 
 ** I saw our amazed van reel, smitten backward ;" 
 
 *' To charm away time, which is here illusion ; " 
 
 ** Woo thee, and I absent, and I unworthy j " 
 
 ** Piece of gallantry, you. After some compliments ; " 
 
 — lines which will show the kind of freedom Mrs. 
 
 Woods allows herself. On the other hand, here is 
 
 a sustained piece of description, full of light and 
 
 sound — 
 
 *' There were no prisoners. 
 Fierce, overwhelming, sudden was the onslaught, 
 I saw our amazed van reel, smitten backward, 
 
 154 
 
Mrs» Woods 
 
 Bear backward in a bloody wild confusion 
 Our deep arrayed host, until one leader, 
 One man appeared to arrest, bear up and onward 
 Our stream of war : the Prince. 
 
 ** Impetuous rivers 
 Thus for an hour dispute with waves of the sea 
 The barren empery of the blown sand 
 And long rock-edges white with rage of waters 
 Roaring right up to heaven. So I beheld 
 The tossed front of battle, smoke and steel, 
 Banner and turban of the infidel, 
 
 " And still our leader ; 
 Then one huge billow of wrath, 
 One roar out-bellowing tumult — and the end, 
 The Prince had fallen." 
 
 Amongst many snatches of lyrical poetry there 
 comes the following, full of grace and charm : — 
 
 ** Cover, O eve, the world with mist, 
 Till we two shall have kist and kist ! 
 
 Linger, O moon, in the western skies. 
 Till we have looked in each other's eyes ! 
 
 Whisper, O wind ! We shall not speak. 
 Heart upon heart and cheek to cheek ! 
 
 Drown, wild dawn, the stars in fire ! 
 We shall have had our hearts' desire ! " 
 
 So, too, the opening ballad of "The Maiden and 
 the Elfin Lover," which prefigures in enigmatic form 
 the fates of Sophie Dorothea and von Konigsmarck, 
 has most of the qualities which a ballad should 
 possess, vague suggestiveness, effective symbolism, 
 and haunting music. 
 
 iSS 
 
MRS. VOYNICH 
 
MRS. VOYNICH 
 
 ** A ND life IS thorny, and youth is vain : and to be 
 -^^ wroth with one we love, doth work like madness 
 in the brain." This is the text from which Mrs. E. L. 
 Voynich appears to start in her exceedingly powerful 
 and exceedingly painful story, " The Gadfly." Her 
 hero, who is nicknamed the Gadfly, because he can 
 wield a pen which stings almost beyond endurance, 
 is a pamphleteer, a satirist, a young revolutionary 
 who serves the cause of Young Italy against Austrian 
 dominion. He plays in some respects the part which 
 Camille Desmoulins played in the French Revolu- 
 tion, only with a thousand times greater bitterness, 
 with a zeal which is unquenched and unquenchable, 
 and with a sceptical mockery and flippancy which is 
 Mephistophelian in its range and variety. He is 
 assuredly, "a spirit that denies," a man maddened 
 and blinded by his own personal wrongs, with certain 
 settled convictions, fixed points of hatred and detesta- 
 tion, which nothing can obliterate or overpower. He, 
 too, is wroth with those whom he once loved, and the 
 hatred which is the bastard son of love knows neither 
 respite nor pause. Long ago, when he was a boy, 
 the girl to whom he was devoted had wrongly 
 
 159 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 supposed him to be a traitor; the friend whom he 
 reverenced, Cardinal MontaneUi, proved himself in 
 one decisive instance a liar and a deceiver ; the 
 religion in which he believed was transformed sud- 
 denly into a mockery ; and the God to whom he was 
 taught to lift up his hands revealed Himself to his 
 fevered imagination as a veritable demon of mischief 
 and spite. There was no God, no faith, no love, no 
 truth ; and the iron had entered into the rebel's soul. 
 He had not always been like this, this Gadfly, 
 this Felice Rivarez, who had been summoned by the 
 Italian conspirators, in virtue of his biting pen, to 
 help the cause of national unity and freedom. He 
 was once a shrinking, sensitive, ardent and emotional 
 youth, with an Italian mother whom he adored, and 
 Cardinal MontaneUi, in whose library he worked at 
 Pisa, to serve alike as tutor and as guardian. But 
 his quick, enthusiastic nature had already taken fire 
 at the hopes and dreams of the revolutionaries, and 
 together with the little Gemma, a girl of seventeen, 
 his old playmate and his dearest love, he had, in 
 amateur and dilettante fashion, mixed himself up 
 with forbidden schemes, and been present at illegal 
 meetings. Once he confessed to a priest, Father 
 Cardi, and under skilful cross-examination had told 
 more than it was wise to tell about himself and his 
 friends. This was the beginning of his disasters. 
 Like the heroine of Browning's poem "The Con- 
 fessional," he discovered that priests were the agents 
 of an unscrupulous government, and could betray a 
 penitent to the authorities. Cast into prison and 
 160 
 
Mrs. Voynich 
 
 released owing to the intercession of the English 
 Ambassador, he comes out of prison to find that his 
 friends mistrust him as a man who cannot keep their 
 secrets. Worst of all, Gemma calls him a traitor, 
 and smites him on the cheek. Last, and most appall- 
 ing discovery, he finds that the mother whose memory 
 he adored had deceived him as to his origin, and 
 that his real father was that Cardinal Montanelli, 
 whose influence and example he had always looked 
 up to as the highest thing under heaven. Nothing 
 now remained to him of all his ardent hopes or his 
 juvenile faith in goodness and virtue. The world 
 was a snare, religion a mockery, love itself a lie. In 
 his frantic despair he makes every arrangement as 
 though he had committed suicide, and ships himself 
 off to South America, shaking the dust of home and 
 early associations from off his feet. He will be a 
 wanderer henceforth, caring for nothing, with un- 
 forgiving hatred burning in his heart. " No part in 
 aught they hope or fear ! No heaven with them, no 
 hell ! . . . lies — lies again, and still they lie ! " His, 
 too, is the same cry which rings through Browning's 
 " Confessional." 
 
 Years afterwards he comes back to Italy again, 
 having suffered indescribable outrages in the interval. 
 The handsome, sensitive, sentimental boy had changed 
 into the bitter, reckless misanthropic fiend. He had 
 been brutally maimed by a Lascar, he had had to 
 work under negroes in sugar plantations, he had 
 been forced to figure as a humpback — a thing of 
 derision and scorn, in a travelling circus in South 
 
 i6i M 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 America ; and at last, mutilated and scarred, per- 
 manently lamed and disabled, and with an exceedingly 
 bitter tongue, he had come back to join all the 
 wildest sects of rebels and assassins in Italy. There 
 are two fixed points in his creed, to trust neither 
 man nor woman, and to hate and despise all priests 
 of the Church. He cannot forgive those who had 
 made him suffer so. The time came when he wanted 
 to forgive, when he would have given anything to 
 get one spark of tenderness in his soul, but his wounds 
 had been too deep and bitter for that. The irony of 
 circumstances brings him close to Cardinal Montanelli 
 and to Gemma, and, with all the old associations 
 making their familiar appeal to him, he was sorely 
 tempted at times to try and unlearn the lessons of 
 his past life and welcome some of the old affection, 
 the ancient reverence. But he had suffered too much, 
 his conscience had been seared with the hot iron of 
 pain and disaster. " Surely there was no other misery 
 like this, to be willing to forgive, to long to forgive, 
 and to know that it was hopeless, that he could not, 
 dared not forgive." Such is the terrible picture of a 
 wretch — whose better feelings have been turned awry 
 at their source, whose whole nature has been perverted 
 and cursed, wounded in its tenderest points, and 
 blasted by men's and women's infidelity — that Mrs. 
 Voynich has tried to paint. The character is finely 
 drawn, with a tragic power and intensity which leave 
 a lasting impression on the reader. Nor will the 
 author of the Gadfly's fictional being spare her hero 
 one jot or tittle of his imminent doom. He is made 
 
 162 
 
Mrs. Voynich 
 
 to tread the winepress of suffering in entire and 
 awful isolation. The Gadfly still loves Gemma, still 
 worships Cardinal Montanelli, that is the added curse 
 of his destiny. But his love is the thwarted, dis- 
 appointed love, and his implicit reverence for all that 
 is great and noble has been turned into gall. He 
 cannot forgive, and yet he cannot forget ; the images 
 of his youth are still there in their secret shrine, but 
 the man has locked the door upon them and refuses 
 to bend his knee. 
 
 There is something crudely powerful in all this, 
 but it belongs rather to the region of melodrama than 
 of art. We seem, moreover, to catch here and there 
 a personal note, as though the author herself had 
 taken sides with her hero against the world. Mrs. 
 Voynich is not neutral in her creations as an artist 
 should be. What we see is not the inevitableness 
 of fate, but something petulant and obstinate, some- 
 thing of the mood of di parti pris. There are written 
 on the title-page the words, " What have we to do 
 with thee, Thou Jesus of Nazareth > " — the cry, be 
 it remembered, of the baffled and expelled demons — 
 and now and again we wonder if the sympathy of 
 the artist has not caught some taint of almost 
 malevolent spite. If there be a recognition of the 
 moral laws, it is in the spirit of Swinburne's lines, 
 " Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean ! The world 
 has grown grey at thy breath." For observe that not 
 for one moment are we permitted to catch through 
 the rifts of broken clouds a solitary gleam of brighter 
 sky. The Gadfly is arrested, tortured, and finally 
 
 163 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 shot in a scene full of horrible detail. Gemma, who 
 would have given the world to be near the rebel in 
 his last moments, and take upon herself some of his 
 sorrow and shame, is not permitted even to discover 
 from his own lips that he is that lost love whom she 
 had wrongly supposed to be a traitor ; while Cardinal 
 Montanelli himself, praying and struggling to win 
 back from the despairing sceptical wretch — who, after 
 all, is his own son — some touch of the old affection 
 of his boyhood, when he learns of his death, in a 
 frenzy of madness, does dishonour to his creed and 
 dies a raving madman. Thus there is nothing to 
 relieve the unbearable darkness, no hint or suggestion 
 to dispel, if even for a moment, the blackness of 
 failure and death. 
 
 Still, there remains the singular strength of the 
 writer — a promise, it may be, of better things here- 
 after. If it were not that she knows how to enlist our 
 interest, if not our sympathy, there is no reason why 
 we should suffer ourselves to peruse Mrs. Voynich's 
 tragedy of "The Gadfly." But she wins us in our 
 own despite. All the last section of the book is full 
 of the crudity of undeveloped art, the work of some 
 clever young writer, inspired by the pessimism which 
 is the privilege of youth, and which the years that 
 bring the philosophic mind do so much to soften and 
 assuage. Nevertheless, two-thirds of " The Gadfly " 
 is replete with literary and dramatic skill, from which 
 great things maybe hoped by-and-by ; and there are 
 isolated scenes, which, though always touched in with 
 biting acid, possess an undeniably picturesque charm. 
 
 164 
 
Mrs* Voynich 
 
 §2 
 
 "Jack Raymond" is a fine study of a par- 
 ticular disposition, seen under a hard and cruel 
 light ; a mordant analysis applied to certain phases 
 of temperament and activity ; above all, a feverish 
 arraignment of cruelty in every shape and form. 
 But what checks our sympathy and gives us an 
 odd- feeling of discomfort is that the passionate 
 interest of the author has interfered with the sane 
 judgment of the artist. She feels so keenly, so 
 profoundly, so tragically that her book gives us the 
 sense of an open wound, a plague-spot detected and 
 laid bare, a poisonous thing whose power we admire 
 and yet shudder at. There is strength in every page 
 of " Jack Raymond." There are also here and there 
 ugly thumb-marks, needlessly coarse touches, as 
 though a satyr had leered over the shoulder of the 
 writer. Of all the various stages of keen personal 
 feeling, there are few which will give us art. If you 
 do not feel intensely, you cannot achieve the artistic 
 thing; but the creative task must come in the second, 
 or reasoned, stage of feeling, and not in the first. A 
 cry of anguish is not art, but it can become so when 
 transfigured in some throbbing line of verse or some 
 poignant wail of music. 
 
 What is the theme of "Jack Raymond " ? It is, I 
 suppose, the appalling effects of the lust of cruelty. 
 Jack Raymond, together with his sister Molly, are 
 orphan children, under the care of their uncle, the 
 
 165 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 Rev. Josiah Raymond, and his colourless wife, Sarah. 
 Jack is a rough cub of a boy, with many tender spots 
 in his organization, which it is not given to every one 
 to find. He is the ringleader in every game of 
 mischief in the Cornish village where he has his 
 home ; a bold, defiant, athletic young devil, even at 
 the age of fourteen, when he and his devoted followers 
 terrorize the district. How is he treated } He is 
 thrashed every day by his uncle, the vicar, who with 
 truly mediaeval vigour, or, worse still, with the spirit 
 of a Torquemada, desires to expel Satan from his 
 youthful form by unremitting discipline. But there 
 are sides in Jack's nature which no one in his early 
 boyhood seems to understand. In a dim, crude 
 fashion the sunsets appeal to him, and the waves and 
 the rocks ; while he is the fierce and unhesitating 
 champion of all animals, wild and tame. He steals 
 a costly knife belonging to his uncle in order to be 
 able to buy a young imprisoned thrush and let it go. 
 He blazes into a fury of anger because his sister's 
 kitten is drowned. He never forgets a scene in 
 which he beheld his uncle thrashing an old blind 
 dog. These are the tender sides of this young boor 
 — always the instinct to protect the weak, to be the 
 champion of every dumb creature that breathes. 
 " He prayeth best who loveth best all things both 
 great and small " — that is the spirit of Jack Raymond. 
 It is the real core to a disposition which has an out- 
 side crust or rind of primitive barbarism. No one, 
 however, in his early life had taken the trouble to 
 discover his secret. 
 
 i66 
 
Mrs, Voynich 
 
 On a temperament like this — quick, ardent, 
 impulsive, savage — come the deadening effects of 
 steady and systematic cruelty. The Rev. Josiah 
 Raymond is a brute, who calls himself a Christian, 
 whose primeval instincts, dwarfed and mutilated by 
 the external observance of a religious creed, have run 
 into the one channel of a love of inflicting pain. 
 The thing is possible enough, psychologically. 
 Indeed, where an artificial constraint has, on the 
 mind of a schoolmaster or priest, brought an external 
 veneer of civilization, the hideous passion remains 
 as an unconscious, authoritative instinct, continually 
 suggesting petty forms of bullying — a dim obscure 
 passion which darkens the man's whole life. In the 
 case of Jack Raymond and his uncle the result is 
 deplorable. The vicar becomes worse and worse as 
 often as he yields to this devouring pleasure of seeing 
 his victim wince ; while the boy's nature, as a matter 
 of course, becomes so hardened and dead that few of 
 the ordinary human traits survive. All the chapters 
 which detail the sickening aspects of the uncle's 
 besetting sin and the appalling cruelties practised on 
 the quivering body of a defenceless boy are as brutal 
 as anything in literature. They have much of that 
 grossihete which the French critic finds in the 
 English novels, and which we find in Zola. 
 
 This, however, is not the only point which ought 
 to qualify our admiration of Mrs. Voynich's work. 
 Her object, I imagine, is to show how intimately all 
 forms of passion are connected, and therefore the 
 very things which tell against the life-history of her 
 
 167 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 hero are accusations of impurity. As a matter of 
 fact, the boy is as innocent and pure-minded as any 
 unspoiled bit of Nature ; but being the victim of an 
 uncle's tyranny — an uncle subject to the thraldom of 
 one particular sin — it is the lad's misfortune that he 
 is always stumbling up against other forms of vice, 
 perpetually suffering from the most absurd charges 
 because he has got a bad name, and therefore ought 
 to be hung without delay. He is thrashed because 
 he is supposed to be corrupting his boy comrades, 
 and it is many years before he can outlive the stigma. 
 In his subsequent career he is over and over again 
 confronted with the excesses of human passion, as 
 though he were some doomed creature, in reality too 
 good, but apparently too bad to live. I am not sure 
 that in dealing with his life the authoress is not as 
 cruel to him as his uncle. There seems no chance, 
 no shelter for one who began under a cloud, and is 
 throughout buffeted by an unceasing storm of mis- 
 understanding and injustice. Even when he is 
 grown up he finds his best friend the cause of his 
 sister's shame. 
 
 It is time to look at the brighter aspect of the 
 whole case. If from one point of view the novel 
 deals with the lifelong torture of the hero, from 
 another standpoint its subject is, or ought to be, if it 
 were properly worked out, the regeneration of Jack 
 Raymond. In the spirit of ancient tragedy it is 
 suggested to us that only suffering can make men 
 know. Jack's first impulse to better things comes 
 from his voluntary letting a thrush escape. His 
 
 1 68 
 
Mrs» Voynich 
 
 next is an act of self-sacrifice, when he postpones his 
 own pleasure in order to give his sister a happy day 
 by the seaside. But the main redemption comes 
 from a sympathetic woman, the mother of a boy 
 whose cause he had stoutly championed at school. 
 Helen Mirski is the wife of a Polish patriot who had 
 suffered long agonies in Russian prisons. She 
 recognized the look on Jack's face — the hopeless look 
 of those who endure nameless punishments — and she 
 is, in truth, his saviour. Attracted to him by the fact 
 that he was her boy's school friend, she takes him 
 away from the dreadful home in Cornwall and makes 
 him a second son of her own. Yet, even so the 
 authoress will not allow her hero to get more than 
 a momentary glimpse of happiness. Helen Mirski 
 dies. Theo, her boy, is an admirable musician, but by 
 no means a trustworthy friend. Even Jack's sister's 
 child, on whom the hero had set his heart, succumbs 
 to diphtheria. So terribly is the cup of fate poisoned 
 with bitterness that the story of Jack Raymond's life 
 is almost too hard for us to bear. 
 
 "Judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard'* 
 is the motto which Mrs. Voynich puts on her title- 
 page. I know not what is the precise moral she 
 intends us to draw, unless it be that the world is fair 
 enough as God made it, but that it has been ruined 
 by that refined savagery which we call civilization. 
 Man's intelligence has only given him new ingenuity 
 in devising fresh forms of cruelty. He is still a 
 brute, but he is now a brute who looks before and 
 after, whose very consciousness of what he is doing 
 
 169 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 makes him infinitely worse than the beasts that 
 perish. How it comes to pass that so many of our 
 young writers — brilliant in promise, keen analysts, 
 with a power of observation, or rather of sensitive 
 appreciation, rarely checked or controlled by patient 
 reasoning— have so resolutely made up their minds 
 that everything is wrong with this world is an 
 interesting and baffling problem. Pessimism is not 
 now a philosophical theory, if ever it was one. It 
 has become a foible, a mania, a disease. One misses 
 the larger outlook, the wide-eyed sanity, of some of 
 those who, like Emerson, for instance, refused to be 
 satisfied with the Hamlet cry that everything is out 
 of joint. But the point which interests the critic is 
 the effect which this settled habit of mind has on 
 artistic work. Passionate indignation is not the 
 temper in which great work is done. It is too hysterical, 
 too melodramatic, too sentimental. The man or the 
 woman who lives in a hospital sometimes forgets 
 that there is sunshine outside, and that a good many 
 of his fellow-creatures are happily normal and healthy. 
 The picture gets distorted. The world is no longer 
 regarded as a widely diversified panorama, but as a 
 corner of the dissecting-room, heavy with the smell 
 of ether. And yet the flowers still grow and the 
 voice of spring is heard in the land. When will 
 people believe that the business of art is to select and 
 not merely to reproduce, to compose a subject and 
 not be solely content with base photographic details ? 
 
 170 
 
Mrs* Voynich 
 
 §3 
 
 Mrs. Voynich holds a place apart among con- 
 temporary novelists. She is known by only three 
 books, "The Gadfly," "Jack Raymond," and 
 " Olive Latham." The first was a strikingly original 
 piece of work, which gave excellent promise for 
 the future ; the second was almost brutal in its 
 remorseless study of the lust of cruelty — redeemed 
 by the exceeding cleverness of its characterization 
 and the undeniable evidences of power. What of the 
 third ? As a piece of construction it is not quite so 
 good as " The Gadfly," but it is more mature, more 
 certain, more assured in the manipulation of incident 
 and the delineation of personalities. On the other 
 hand, it does not possess quite so ugly a subject as 
 " Jack Raymond," because the passions with which it 
 deals are nobler, more human, more dignified. Yet 
 "Olive Latham," too, has a brutality of its own — 
 not the grassier eU of " Jack Raymond," but all that 
 is involved in an unshrinking analysis of certain 
 morbid states of consciousness. Mrs. Voynich's 
 books have some of the quality of a pathological 
 treatise — for instance, she traces at great length in 
 the last the stages by which an overwrought mind 
 can come to the very verge of madness — combined 
 with instincts of realism or naturalism learnt, possibly, 
 in the school of Russian novelists. It is not the 
 influence of Zola which she feels, but Tolstoy, or, 
 perhaps, still more, Dostoievsky. Humanity is laid 
 
 171 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 bare with cold impartiality ; all its mutilated sinews, 
 all its shuddering nerves and tissues are put, as it 
 were, on the board without compunction or mercy. 
 But, sometimes faint and sometimes clear, rings a 
 beautiful note of pity, which brings the authoress to 
 the side of the angels. Never was there such a 
 realist who yet could not rid herself of idealism ; 
 never so bold an explorer into the less known and 
 unfamiliar regions of psychology who yet retained 
 so many of the impulses of the humanitarian. Mrs. 
 Voynich treats her characters with stern neutrality. 
 She makes her Vladimir, her Olive, her Karol Sla- 
 vinsky suffer nameless horrors. But she is sorry for 
 them, because the fault lies rather with the circum- 
 stances than with themselves. And when the pinch 
 comes at the end, when it is just a toss-up whether 
 everything goes by the board or some few crumbs 
 of comfort are kept as a sop to the uncovenanted 
 mercies of humanity, she suddenly elects to have a 
 happy ending. Dr. Slavinsky ought to have been 
 cursed with spinal paralysis, but he is marvellously 
 cured. Olive Latham might have gone mad, or she 
 might have committed suicide ; on the contrary, she 
 is likely to marry and make happy him who was her 
 partner and ally in some of the gloomiest episodes 
 of her life. It is not quite artistic, but it is very 
 human. We like Mrs. Voynich's work none the less, 
 because, in ^the midst of her realistic painting and 
 her pessimistic inclinations, she allows herself to shed 
 a tear. She does more than that — in the last two 
 pages she actually contrives to smile. 
 
 172 
 
Mrs. Voynich 
 
 " Olive Latham " has many threads of interest. 
 It is a study of a particular temperament — a strong 
 self-reliant girl, born of a weak mother and a dis- 
 appointed father, a girl who insists on going her own 
 way, whether in her friendships or her nursing, and, 
 like many strong natures, finds that her independence 
 leads her very nearly to mental shipwreck. The 
 book is also a study of the various degrees of nervous 
 breakdown, consequent on a great and decisive shock 
 — sternly repressed and overcome in the case of the 
 male, Karol Slavinsky, finally conquered even by the 
 girl Olive, although at a terrible cost. And, lastly, 
 we have some graphic scenes in St. Petersburg and 
 the Russian provincial life, together with sidelights 
 on the Russian police, and the character which in- 
 evitably becomes Nihilist and Anarchist. It is doubt- 
 less in this last aspect that the novel has its chief 
 interest, for this is the central motive on which the 
 incidents depend, and which gives a sort of unity 
 to an otherwise disconnected piece of work. Olive 
 Latham, working as a professional nurse in London, 
 comes across a sensitive, thoughtful Russian, Vladimir, 
 or Volodya, Damarov, who might have been a great 
 artist, for he was full of the instincts which make a 
 painter or sculptor, but who abandoned everything 
 for the sake of the popular cause. Olive engages 
 herself to him, goes to Russia to nurse him in ill- 
 ness, and from that time is involved in all the perils 
 and unspeakable sufferings of suspected Nihilists. 
 Vladimir is dragged from his bed one freezing night, 
 thrown into prison, and dies after four days frona 
 
 173 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 consumption, the girl being throughout the helpless 
 witness of the tragedy. It is this which almost turns 
 her crazy, and condemns her for many months after 
 her return to England to mute and hopeless agony. 
 
 More interesting, however, than Vladimir is the 
 figure of his friend, a Pole, called Karl Slavinsky. 
 Here is a study, apparently taken from the life, of a 
 Polish medical student, who lived with his sister 
 Wanda, a conspirator, as was also her brother. " They 
 belonged to one of the doomed families of Poland, 
 the families in which each successive generation con- 
 tributes its share to the national martyrology. The 
 brother and sister had not become rebels ; they had 
 been born so. The thing was a matter of course, 
 simply because their name was Slavinsky." Vladimir, 
 who ought to have been an artist, came under the 
 influence of Karol, and, as a matter of fact, betrothed 
 himself to Wanda. Then the police swooped down 
 and arrested all three. Vladimir was let out of prison, 
 although kept under supervision, because nothing 
 could be proved against him. Karol Slavinsky, 
 against whom a good deal had been proved, was sent 
 to the Siberian convict station of Akatui, where he 
 suffered all that human ingenuity, combined with a 
 fiendish cruelty, can devise in the way of torture. 
 But of Wanda, for a long time, there was no news 
 at all. Gradually, however, the truth leaked out. 
 She was a pretty girl, and being, for this reason, in 
 deadly fear of actual outrage, she succeeded at last, 
 after many failures, in cutting her throat with a bit 
 of glass. That is the sort of experience that either 
 
 174 
 
Mrs. Voynich 
 
 drives men mad or makes them into revolutionary 
 heroes. Karol was amnestied subsequently, and was 
 occasionally allowed certain liberties. But, of course, 
 he was now more than ever heart and soul in the 
 revolutionary movement, a man over whose head the 
 waters of affliction had passed, and left him nothing 
 but a hard, terrible instrument for the vengeance and 
 the underground machinery of the Nihilist cause. 
 And into all this terrible ferment of revolutionary 
 aims, checked and controlled by the ubiquitous power 
 of the Russian police, Olive Latham is cast because 
 she has formed a friendship with Karol and had 
 become engaged to Vladimir. Karol, it should be 
 added, had one soft spot in his nature, a tender 
 devotion to Olive Latham, rigorously repressed as 
 long as Vladimir was alive, but afterwards allowed 
 to conquer his soul and intelligence, when his friend 
 had died in prison. 
 
 The details, however, of conspiracy, the dangers 
 of a Nihilistic career, the constant menace of Russian 
 prisons, and the " Ultima Thule " of Siberia, form 
 only one part of Mrs. Voynich's striking novel. It 
 is with the effect on Olive Latham's mind that she 
 is interested — the extraordinary changes which a 
 courageous and independent personality can go 
 through if once the frail bark of her individual 
 fortunes is swept into the mighty current of revo- 
 lutionary intrigue. Olive Latham, after seeing her 
 lover practically killed by the cruel rigours of a St. 
 Petersburg prison, comes back to England a hope- 
 less wreck. Nothing more poignant has ever been 
 
 175 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 written than the careful and deliberate analysis of 
 her mental state. How near can one go to madness 
 and yet be saved from falling over the verge ? It is 
 a terrible theme, and yet Mrs. Voynich treats it with 
 scientific coldness and precision. There is a chapter 
 in the latter half of the volume which engrosses us 
 with its close and unflinching realism. Olive, hither- 
 to pursued by vague terrors, now becomes a prey to 
 waking hallucinations, especially all those morbid 
 states in which the human consciousness is divided 
 into two personalities, the one watching, criticizing, 
 mocking the other. Everything becomes unreal ; all 
 the familiar surroundings, all the joys and loves, the 
 events and the persons, are but painted films covering 
 and ineffectually disguising an awful, meaningless 
 blackness. Possibly it is a question whether patho- 
 logical conditions like these have any right to appear 
 in a novel ; but if we grant that a novelist may 
 apply his analysis to any and every state of our con- 
 scious or unconscious self, then it must be admitted 
 that Mrs. Voynich has done her work admirably. A 
 cruel page of psychology is written with undeniable 
 power. And then comes at the last what I have 
 before noted, as a possible inconsistent, but very 
 welcome, proof of our authoress's humanity. She is 
 sorry for these poor creatures who, if they had been 
 allowed to develop in a free, untrammelled democratic 
 air, would have blossomed exceedingly, and borne 
 abundant fruit. But not wholly through their fault 
 they are swept into a Nihilistic maelstrom, and are 
 not given a reasonable chance. So the authoress will 
 
 176 
 
Mrs* Voynich 
 
 herself give them a chance, playing the part of a 
 merciful Providence to her creations. Olive Latham 
 shall slowly recover, and, although her parents and 
 her friends despaired of her, shall be cured by the 
 quick masterful energies of Karol Slavinsky. He, 
 on his side, shall win his own reward ; he shall be 
 cured of his spinal paralysis, and, more than that, he 
 shall win the love that made all the difference in his 
 life. Thus, at the close, after all the storm and stress 
 is over, Karol Slavinsky and Olive Latham find that 
 each is necessary to the other, and reach the lovers' 
 haven where they would be. They were made for 
 each other, after all, for the man had weathered all 
 the tempests which nearly submerged the girl's soul. 
 She had nursed his body, he had nursed her mind. 
 And together, in a final page of almost idyllic 
 romance, they talk about butterflies and the stars, 
 and see the buttercups smiling at their feet. " White 
 hawthorn petals clung to Olive's hair as she came 
 out from the shadow of the trees into the level 
 sunlight. Very far up in a pearly sky a lark was 
 singing." It is a remarkable novel, loosely put 
 together, but distinctive, powerful, and original. 
 
 m N 
 
MISS ROBINS 
 
MISS ROBINS 
 
 IF "The Open Question" had been just half as 
 long, it would have been twice as effective as a 
 work of art. There are four hundred odd pages in it, 
 and there is hardly one of these which does not bear 
 obvious traces of careful writing and serious thought. 
 But contribution to fiction it certainly is not. " The 
 Open Question" may be described by many terms 
 — may be spoken of as an essay on several grave 
 aspects of life and the riddle of this painful earth ; 
 it may be called an ethical discourse on points touch- 
 ing the limits of human responsibility and the freedom 
 of will. These and other titles it may well earn — 
 anything, everything, so long as you do not call it 
 either a novel or a work of art. For the touchstone 
 in these matters is quite a simple one. Do the 
 characters of the story exist in and for themselves ? 
 Are they loved, admired, respected, hated because 
 they are bits of that diamond with many facets which 
 we call humanity ? Then, indeed, the man or woman 
 who paints them on the canvas is an artist working 
 in freedom and delightful consciousness of power, re- 
 making the world, as every novelist should do, as a 
 duodecimo edition of Providence. But supposing the 
 
 i8i 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 figures are not interesting in themselves, supposing 
 that they are too obvious puppets, and we are watch- 
 ing all the time the hands of the manipulator who 
 work their wires, then the result may be as ingenious 
 or as true or as philosophic as you please, as ingenious 
 as one of Mrs. Humphry Ward's studies, as true as 
 " Vanity Fair," as philosophical as George Meredith's 
 *' Diana of the Crossways " — but it is not, strictly 
 speaking, a novel. The primary object of the novelist, 
 a free delineation of real characters, is obscured by 
 the praiseworthy effort of the ethical writer to point 
 a moral and adorn a tale. 
 
 All these considerations are truisms, but it is 
 necessary to come back to first principles when we 
 look at some of the modern works of fiction. Many 
 of the most significant examples seem to be written 
 without any sense of measure or proportion, just as 
 though the gifted author or authoress had every faculty 
 except the editorial faculty of conciseness and critical 
 self-compression. Here is Miss Elizabeth Robins 
 pouring forth in over-flowing stream all the accumu- 
 lated study of many years, and apparently forgetting 
 that one of the paramount duties of the artist is to 
 know that excess is as bad as poverty. It is not until 
 we have got through half of " The Open Question " 
 that we discover what the story is about. I am wrong 
 even in this. It is not before the last quarter of the 
 book that we discover whither the author is leading 
 us. It would be unjust to say a word in dispraise of 
 all the serious thoughtfulness of these pages. They 
 are crammed throughout with reflection, imagination, 
 
 182 
 
Miss Robins 
 
 philosophical dogma, perplexed and anxious in- 
 quiries, and, it may be added, choice and careful 
 phrase. The odd thing is that it has never occurred 
 to Miss Robins that while thought is valuable for 
 its own sake in the essay, it is only a means to an 
 end in a novel. I have my own theory about the 
 origin of this book. I believe it to be a nightmare 
 begotten of a perusal of Nietzsche's philosophy. 
 From beginning to end the burden is the burden of a 
 querulous and unsatisfied egoism, and that way, as 
 we know from many prevalent examples, lies madness. 
 Redundance, superfluity, a plethora of words, these 
 are not the only characteristics of " The Open Ques- 
 tion." Another is that which has been already in- 
 dicated by the allusion to Nietzsche — the sorry burden 
 of egoism. Nearly every one of the characters of 
 the novel is painfully travailing over the welfare of 
 his or her soul, a problem which, for reasons that 
 are tolerably obvious, is always connected with a sick 
 and green-hued pessimism. There is a family of 
 Ganos, belonging to the Southern States of America. 
 They are proud and obstinate, representing a sort of 
 aristocracy of decorum in the midst of democratic 
 lawlessness. Moreover, they seem to have been in 
 the habit of marrying in and in ; they are at once 
 consanguineous and feeble. Of the first family with 
 whom we are concerned, one brother married early 
 and died ; another brother lived a valetudinarian life, 
 and a sister, after much quiet ineffectiveness, herself 
 paid the debt of Nature. Ethan Gano, the son of the 
 elder brother, falls in love with Val, or Valeria Gano, 
 
 i»3 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 the daughter of the second brother, and it is on this 
 pair, when we really reach the main issue of the 
 story, that our attention is concentrated. Does, then, 
 the author wish us to observe in a salient and striking 
 instance what are the effects of love-making among 
 cousins ? Without doubt this is one of her objects ; 
 but, oddly enough, there is one representative of 
 the Gano race who unites in 'her own personality 
 everything that the others lack. It is the lady 
 who throughout the novel represents distinction, 
 strength, self-control, authority and common sense, 
 the stately old grandmother Gano, who dominates 
 the narrative as she dominated her household. If the 
 race could throw off so grand an example of master- 
 ful individuality, it could not have been quite so 
 bad as we have been led to suppose, and as she 
 dies at the age of eighty, full of years, but with un- 
 diminished strength, we begin to wonder whether the 
 feeble, storm-tossed sentimentalists who surround her 
 have not themselves chiefly to blame for their hopeless 
 failure. 
 
 The author's heroine, however, is not the old lady, 
 but her granddaughter, Valeria ; and the hero is the 
 degenerate son of the elder Mrs. Gano's most 
 degenerate first born. Valeria, or Val as she is 
 habitually called, is quite charming throughout the 
 first half of the book. Her early years are described 
 with a tender and affectionate fondness for her 
 petulant vagaries which is beyond praise. Quite 
 unconscious of her fate this little victim played ; she 
 did not know that she was destined to become a 
 
 184 
 
Miss Robins 
 
 terrific warning as to prohibited degrees of marriage. 
 Ethan, too, the foredoomed lover, had his youth of 
 innocence and gaiety — a little serious, perhaps, for an 
 ordinary boy, but clever, quick, natural and affec- 
 tionate. These two become swept into the current of 
 modern worries about the soul, and behold ! all their 
 ancient graciousness disappears. The boy goes to 
 Paris, feasts, starves, despairs, is happy, until the 
 shadow of Friedrich Nietzsche comes over him, and 
 all that odd confraternity of self-interrogating idiots, 
 who in Paris call themselves Decadents or Diabolists 
 or any other name which suits their eccentric un- 
 reasonableness. In the Parisian discipline Ethan's 
 soul dies. He would not so phrase it himself. Doubt- 
 less he would describe the scales as falling off his 
 eyes, the prisoner as being released from his bonds. 
 Nevertheless, from the point of view, let us say, of 
 old Mrs. Gano, the one possessor of an ethical back- 
 bone in an invertebrate race, the hero has ceased to 
 be a man, and become — what shall I say i* — a modern 
 philosopher. 
 
 Henceforth he is being carefully prepared for 
 his mission. Through the instrumentality of his 
 Bohemian friend, Dick Driscoll, he is brought face to 
 face with suicide, not as a theory, but as a fact. He 
 overhears a terrific conversation, in which a lady of 
 advanced views advocates the removal of one's self 
 from life as the only courageous thing to do. The 
 iron enters into his soul, although he is as yet 
 unaware of the personal application of this tremen- 
 dous moral. The revelation comes to him when he 
 
 185 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 returns to America and falls in love with his cousin, 
 Val Gano. For then he learns from her father, who 
 is assuredly one of the Gano failures, that while the 
 only thing for humanity at large is a physical re- 
 generation, the particular curse of the family to 
 which Ethan and Val belong is an hereditary 
 tendency to consumption. And the little girl of his 
 heart hears this sentence of doom. Crouched in a 
 corner, she has been a witness of the scene, and is 
 left to make the necessary application to herself and 
 her lover. She, too, being a modern young woman, 
 has gone through that dreary round, first of disbelief, 
 then of amateur philosophizing, finally of pessimistic 
 despair, which at the present day seems to be chang- 
 ing the whole nature of growing and developing 
 womanhood. One sometimes wonders what the 
 woman, whom Nature intended to be the blithely 
 unconscious representative of Faith, is going to turn 
 into, when she has learnt the easy lessons of 
 scepticism from the lips of a man, and discovers 
 in consequence that the world becomes for her a 
 blank negation. A man bears this burden with a 
 certain sturdy recklessness, a woman with a pathetic 
 shrinking. For the God whom she has disowned she 
 is apt at first to substitute the man. But, alas ! that 
 idol has, too, obvious feet of clay. 
 
 And now, at last, we come to the goal towards 
 which the author of this novel has been steadily, 
 but loquaciously directing us. Love must have 
 its rights. Ethan and Val shall marry, whatever 
 be the menace of inauspicious stars. But because 
 
 1 86 
 
Miss Robins 
 
 they do this deed open-eyed, they shall with horrible 
 resolution determine to commit suicide together 
 after one year of married happiness. On their 
 shoulders comes the responsibility of setting a tre- 
 mendous example. They step together into the 
 yacht that is going to consummate their joint fates. 
 "Where shall we go?" said Ethan. "I think I'll 
 steer for the sunset," she answered, in the same level 
 voice. He paused with the sheet in his hand. " It 
 will bring us out at the golden gate," she said. 
 
 Such is the conclusion of " The Open Question," 
 clearly one of the most remarkable books of the time. 
 Its defects are obvious and superficial, its merits are 
 deep-lying. We may hate and repudiate the moral, 
 but we cannot deny the strength with which it is 
 enforced. But because there is such a thing as 
 sanity in the world, such a thing as the indomitable 
 strength of a man or woman who accepts life for 
 what it is worth and is not always seeking for " a 
 quietus with a bare bodkin," let me quote a few 
 sentences of that rare old heroine, Grandmamma 
 Gano. "My good soul," she remarks on one occa- 
 sion, "you take too much responsibility. It does not 
 lie with you to refashion the world. I can't be sure 
 that it would not leave the world poorer if disease 
 were got rid of. I am not, like you, ready to arraign 
 the Everlasting." 
 
 187 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 §2 
 
 When Miss Elizabeth Robins wrote her earlier 
 works, such as " Below the Salt " and " George 
 Mandeville's Husband," under the name of C. E. 
 Raimond, we hardly suspected that she would write 
 so fine a novel as " The Open Question." Even after 
 *' The Open Question," " The Magnetic North " comes 
 as a surprise. For here there is no analysis of some 
 of those social problems, half scientific, half ethical, 
 which occupy the minds of thoughtful people anxious 
 about the future health and sanity of their race, but 
 a direct, immediate picture, taken, as we should 
 imagine, from the most vivid and fully realized 
 experience — chapters in the history of a gold craze 
 on the borders of the Arctic circle. " The Magnetic 
 North" is primarily an account of what happens 
 when men go mad over the bare possibility of 
 extracting gold from the Klondyke; a narrative 
 which in every line and page and chapter conveys 
 the impression of having been seen and felt and gone 
 through in all its details. Miss Robins, we imagine, 
 has been to the Klondyke, has talked with the 
 miners, has seen the conditions of their life, with 
 that background of eternal snow, of the long winter, 
 of the break-up of the ice, of the first rush to Dawson 
 City, which she so picturesquely describes. This, of 
 course, is not so much a novel as a transcript from 
 experience. But it is also a very remarkable piece 
 
 i88 
 
Miss Robins 
 
 of work from the pen of a woman. For the story is 
 not only told throughout from the standpoint of the 
 man, but is conceived in the masculine spirit — a hard, 
 cruel, faithful portrayal of that base and feverish 
 energy, carried on by the male when once he is 
 infected with the lust for gold. 
 
 "The Magnetic North" lives because it is real, 
 and because it adds to the ripe fruits of actual 
 experience something of the ideal and the imaginative 
 in its treatment of character. It is very long, very 
 exhaustive, and we are often conscious that the 
 materials with which the authoress deals have 
 escaped her guiding hand and spread themselves 
 out according to their own inconsequent fashion. 
 That is the worst of a transcript of reality. The 
 details are apt to overpower the whole design ; the 
 chapters become more important than the story ; 
 the incidents more vital than that general scheme 
 which they ought to illustrate. It is so easy for the 
 pen to run away with the author when he or she 
 becomes a descriptive reporter. The other attitude, 
 the self-critical pose, when the materials have been 
 accumulated and the process of assimilation and 
 rearrangement begins, is the arduous process, which 
 alone can convert documents into a work of art. 
 Miss Robins's novel has not attained this final stage. 
 It remains on the level of documentary facts — 
 chapters from a well-filled notebook, not yet co- 
 ordinated and supervised. For instance, we begin 
 with the fortunes of a party of five men bound for 
 the Klondyke goldfields. There is a Denver bank 
 
 189 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 clerk named Potts ; a schoolmaster from Nova Scotia, 
 whose name is MacCann, but ordinarily known as 
 " Mac the Miner " ; an Irish-American lawyer from 
 San Francisco, named O'Flynn ; a Kentucky colonel, 
 Colonel George Warren, who had never smelt powder, 
 but by some gift of heaven had the virtues of com- 
 mand and leadership ; and " the Boy," who was no 
 boy at all, but a man of twenty-two, Morris Burnet. 
 Who is going to be the hero of the tale ? Potts and 
 O'Flynn we rule out early; the second is a talker, 
 the first is a man not plentifully endowed with 
 courage. But for a time, indeed for a great many 
 chapters, we imagine that Mac the Miner is the 
 leading personage, the delightfully dry, dour, Presby- 
 terian Scotchman, who is early cured of a propensity 
 to drink, and who, throughout many graphic pages, 
 strikes us as the character beyond all others whom 
 the author desires to paint. One feature after 
 another of his personality is brought to light and 
 explored, especially when he takes to his heart a little 
 derelict Indian child, Kaviak, who begins by calling 
 him " Farva," and ends by engrossing all the miner's 
 rough tenderness. Nevertheless, when we are a third 
 of our way through this somewhat protracted novel 
 we discover that Mac the Miner is not the hero at all. 
 There is no hero — or, perhaps, there are two heroes, 
 the two men who, by some curious psychological 
 bond, have become " pardners," the Kentucky colonel 
 and the Boy. 
 
 Nor yet does the general course of the narrative 
 show many traces of the controlling hand. It is a 
 
 190 
 
Miss Robins 
 
 story about the goldfields — otherwise the title is a 
 misnomer — and yet quite three-quarters of it is 
 occupied, not with the goal, but with the long and 
 terrible efforts made to arrive at it. The little party 
 of five establish themselves on the Yukon at what is 
 known as " Big Chimney Camp," in order to wait for 
 the breaking up of the ice. Then their relations get 
 so strained, or, perhaps, I should rather say the stores 
 get so diminished, that two of them, the Colonel and 
 the Boy, resolve to go off together and face the terrors 
 of an Arctic winter in a hand sledge, with the faint 
 prospect of arriving at Minook, where the rumour is 
 that there is gold. The awful experiences which they 
 undergo, the personal perils, the extraordinary strain 
 that is put on their friendship, the mutual services 
 which they manage to render, and which in the long 
 run keep their hearts in the right place, occupy the 
 major portion of the book. Meanwhile the other 
 three in whom we were primarily interested are left 
 behind in Big Chimney Camp, and do not reappear 
 till towards the close. Minook is at last reached, 
 and found to be no abiding city, while Dawson itself, 
 the ultimate object of their ambitions, takes quite 
 a small and unimportant place in the concluding 
 chapters. Many threads are taken up, disentangled, 
 and then lost as the story proceeds. Sister Winifred, 
 for instance, the nun at the Holy Cross Roman 
 Catholic Mission, looks as if she were going to be 
 an important person. In truth, she is an important 
 person, for, so far as we can discover, she changes 
 the mental atmosphere, and, indeed, the whole life, 
 
 191 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 of the Boy. Yet it is only, as it were, by accident 
 that we discover the extent of this influence in a 
 hastily written chapter at the close. The same is the 
 case with an Indian princess, the wild, untutored 
 savage who is called Princess Muckluck. She, too, 
 sets her young affections on the Boy, and we imagine 
 that there will be some indication, at all events, of 
 the rivalry between the pair, the one representing 
 the lower, the other the higher, elements in the Boy's 
 appreciation of his life's ideal. The materials, it is 
 clear, are too important and too insistent for Miss 
 Robins's management. The denouement becomes 
 almost abrupt; so many pages and chapters have 
 been written, and already the novel has attained such 
 formidable dimensions that it is necessary to finish. 
 And finish we do, with a certain haste. The reader 
 rubs his eyes, and discovers that he is unexpectedly 
 at the end. Most of us are apt to echo the con- 
 cluding remarks. On the three hundred and eighty- 
 seventh page of this closely printed book, O'Flynn 
 and Potts are discussing where the Boy has gone, now 
 that he has rushed on board the steamer going down 
 the Yukon towards the mouth and away from the 
 goldfields. It is a curious conclusion, but it is very 
 significant. 
 
 " Say, Potts, where in hell is he goin' ? '* 
 
 " Damfino." 
 
 With the ignorance of Potts every reader will sym- 
 pathize. He does not know any more than Potts, 
 although he vaguely suspects that the Boy, getting 
 rid of a certain crude agnosticism of his youth, is 
 
 192 
 
Miss Robins 
 
 going to join the Holy Cross Mission, thanks to the 
 sweet guidance of Sister Winifred. 
 
 Nevertheless, ** The Magnetic North " remains an 
 extremely suggestive and impressive piece of work 
 for many reasons. The Colonel is a finely drawn 
 figure ; so is Mac, if only he were allowed to develop. 
 The scenes are pictured for us with an almost appal- 
 ling veracity. On the confines of civilization, where 
 man in his struggle for gold becomes well-nigh a 
 brute, there is little enough left of all that more or less 
 superficial culture which represents human progress 
 as it emerges from the chaotic natural state. When 
 Hobbes, depicting the primitive condition of human 
 kind, said that each man was a wolf to his neighbour, 
 he was absolutely describing what happens within 
 the confines of the Arctic Circle in the mad rush for 
 the Klondyke goldfields. Each step in the demora- 
 lizing process is traced with unshrinking hand. The 
 confinement first, the solitude, the appalling monotony 
 of the long winter, the noiselessness — these are more 
 or less physical features. Then come the effects on 
 the individual — restraint, boredom, alienation, the 
 redintegration of the savage instincts, the growing 
 hatred of the "pardner," only checked by the fact 
 that in these regions at the top of the map " a man 
 alone is a man lost " — such is the psychological 
 aspect. And then come the touches of grace, the 
 little influences which keep the heart pure and sound, 
 the instinct which made Mac clasp to his heart the 
 Indian child Kaviak, the tenderness which led the 
 Boy to claim a certain affectionate kinship with 
 
 193 O 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 the Esquimaux dog whom he called " Nig.'* But 
 all these are, after all, only animal instincts, or, 
 if human, human in the lower manifestations. By 
 themselves they would not be enough to change the 
 point of view from the brute to the human being. 
 We want the supplementary effects of religion, in 
 whatever mystical or imaginative guise; we need 
 the influences of a place like Holy Cross Mission. 
 That, without doubt, is one of the things which Miss 
 Robins wants to tell us. Never didactic, never 
 preaching a moral, she yet shows us the extraordinary 
 results which, in these remote and primitive terri- 
 tories, an ardent religious faith, firmly believed in and 
 conscientiously carried out into practice, will achieve. 
 Some of the best chapters of her book deal with Holy 
 Cross, with Sister Winifred, Father Brachet, and the 
 others, even the fanatic, hard, austere, self-sacrificing 
 Brother Paul. Place all this ardour of religious 
 emotion, combined with practical beneficence in 
 schools and rescue work, against the background of 
 simple savagery, represented by Nicholas of Pymeut 
 and the Princess Muckluck, and you have all the 
 elements of a strongly dramatic plot The authoress 
 is, indeed, prodigal of her materials. There is enough 
 in these twenty-two chapters for at least five novels. 
 Even now I have said nothing of the descriptive skill 
 which paints for us in unforgettable words the rigours 
 of Arctic travelling, nor yet of that strong masculine 
 touch with which Miss Robins fearlessly portrays 
 wild, reckless, selfish, common types of gold-seeking 
 men, with whatever they do, and, above all, with 
 
 194 
 
Miss Robins 
 
 whatever they say, faithfully transcribed. It is an 
 extraordinary book for a woman to write, a book 
 which errs, if it does err, only through the over- 
 powering effect of its rich and inexhaustible con- 
 tents, each item of which bears the impress of vivid 
 and experienced reality. 
 
 195 
 
MISS MARY WILKINS 
 
MISS MARY WILKINS 
 
 § I 
 
 THERE are few of our modern writers who 
 have the art of the short story so much 
 at their finger-ends as Miss Mary E. Wilkins. 
 To talk of the technique of a particular author or 
 authoress always strikes one with a chilling sense 
 of pedantry. Nevertheless, there is no other way of 
 describing Miss Wilkins' mastery over her materials 
 than to say that she has, consciously or unconsciously, 
 elaborated a perfect technique. Unconsciously, pro- 
 bably, or almost certainly. For questions of tech- 
 nique, like questions of grammar, only arise after the 
 good work of literature has been done. This is what 
 makes the position of the grammarian or the critic 
 useful, it may be, but hardly dignified. Neither one 
 nor the other can lay down in advance the ideal 
 types or forms which a living language or art is bound 
 inevitably to assume. The artist does his work first, 
 inventing his own technique as he goes along, and 
 then, longo intervallo, comes the precise and analytic 
 critic to point out the rules which underlie the new 
 species, to dissect the structure, not in its breathing 
 and living grace, but as one might put a pin through 
 a butterfly in order to study its wings. The critic has 
 
 199 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 to wait on the movements of genius, and is only 
 whipper-in to the lame dogs of literature. 
 
 Miss Wilkins' stories illustrate very different 
 kinds of excellence in their respective styles. A 
 great many people, apparently, have not discovered 
 how different in their essence are a short story and a 
 novel. There must be always something pictorial in 
 the short story. Its art is bound to be some variety 
 of impressionism. Think of the conditions. Within 
 thirty, forty, or fifty pages you have to convey to 
 the reader a perfectly distinct and self-centred 
 narrative, idea, or impression. You may do it by the 
 suggestiveness which sets the reader's mind thinking, 
 so that he can carry out and complete for himself 
 the thing which you have hinted as a silhouette. 
 Or else the author possesses one clear, masterful, and 
 obvious idea, and sacrifices all the ordinary com- 
 plexity of human nature in order to give it adequate 
 illustration. In the first instance, you have what is 
 in reality concentrated and essential history. In the 
 second, you have a fragment of character, a specific 
 trait or quality of human nature, the illumination of 
 a temperament. Take, for instance, in Miss Wilkins' 
 volume, " Silence," a story which she calls " A New 
 England Prophet." She is describing how a certain 
 community in the Far West was suddenly seized and 
 shaken by the not unfamiliar form of religious mania 
 which believes that the world is at once coming to an 
 end. In the Lennox farmhouse there is a collection 
 of men and women transported out of their ordinary 
 selves, mainly because Soloman Lennox seems to them 
 
 2CX) 
 
Miss Mary Wilkins 
 
 an inspired seer, and Alonso Lennox, his son, fourteen 
 years old, and deaf and dumb from his birth, draws 
 wonderful pictures of flying angels on his slate. 
 Here are materials out of which could be made a 
 characteristic study of New England superstition 
 done in the form of an essay, or a detailed history of 
 a peculiar phase of civilization elaborated in a novel. 
 But, for Miss Wilkins' purposes the treatment must be 
 different. As a short story it must be confined to 
 one issue, the temporary madness of a New England 
 prophet — just one phase of a gloomy and superstitious 
 character. Soloman Lennox, with his denunciations, 
 and his parrot-cries of repentance, and his faith in the 
 inspiration of his half-idiot son, is the centre of the 
 picture. For the sake of contrast, there are grouped 
 round him his easily persuaded wife, his half- 
 shrinking daughter, Melissa, and an ironical and 
 sceptical brother, Simeon Lennox, to serve as the 
 vindication of common sense. Infatuated men and 
 women make for themselves white flying garments 
 to ascend into the air. They meet on the appointed 
 evening on a neighbouring hill, and come back, 
 wretched, bedraggled, disillusioned, in the morning. 
 But Soloman Lennox, with his one over-mastering 
 idea, gives the keynote of the whole, so that the last 
 thing we see and remember is his shrunken figure, 
 "sitting sadly within himself, a prophet brooding 
 over the ashes of his own prophetic fire." 
 
 Take another example of the manipulation of the 
 short story, where the great point is not to illustrate 
 a phase of character, but to describe, with vivid and 
 
 201 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 poignant touches, a scene. The first tale, " Silence," 
 is a wonderful bit of impressionist art, where litera- 
 ture is so used as to become akin to painting, giving 
 all the effect of colour and light and shade. Silence 
 Hoit is the heroine, with a deep, passionate love for 
 David Walcott. Miss Wilkins never misleads us as to 
 what she is trying to do. It is not the enduring love 
 of maid and man with which she is occupying herself. 
 That is only the excuse for the narrative. From the 
 outset we are transported into a tense, nervous, 
 electrical atmosphere, in the midst of which the 
 village of Deerfield is feverishly expecting a midnight 
 attack by the Indians and the French. " * Oh, David ! 
 what is that on your cloak ? What is it } ' David 
 looked curiously at his cloak. * I see naught on my 
 cloak save old weather-stains,* said he. *What 
 mean you. Silence ? ' Silence quieted down suddenly. 
 'It is gone now,' said she, in a subdued voice. 
 * What did you see. Silence ? ' Silence turned 
 towards him; her face quivered convulsively. *I 
 saw a blotch of blood,' she cried ; * I have been 
 seeing them everywhere all day. I have seen 
 them on the snow as I came along.' " There it is, on 
 the second page of the story, a vague, thrilling 
 impression of coming disaster, of which Silence is the 
 mouthpiece. We know what to expect — all the 
 terror of the midnight attack, the women who lose 
 their reason and babble of green fields, the unmarried 
 girl who frantically nourishes a dead baby, the storm 
 of bloodshed and rapine which sweeps over the 
 doomed village, the wives who are rigid and cold 
 
 202 
 
Miss Mary Wilkins 
 
 upstairs, the men with their grimy and blood- 
 besprinkled faces firing madly into the dark. Silence 
 is herself swept along the resistless current of fate. 
 Her lover is torn away from her as a prisoner, and 
 only after many days returns to her arms. But 
 nothing matters, nothing concerns us, save this lurid 
 picture of a frontier village, smiling in peace and 
 prosperity one day and a ruined mass of smouldering 
 beams and horribly mutilated corpses the next 
 morning. 
 
 There are other varieties of the short story which 
 are not nearly so' successful as these two. You can 
 have a condensed history, like that which is called 
 "The Buckley Lady," where a poor, patient little 
 girl, endowed with a beautiful face, is educated to 
 expect a lordly lover who' never comes, and after 
 many years is run away with by a man of her own 
 choice. Or, again, " Evelina's Garden," dealing with 
 two generations of Evelinas, the second repre- 
 sentative of the name reproducing not only the 
 features, but also the fate of the first, though with a 
 difference. The condensed history never makes quite 
 so good a short tale as the impressionist variety. Or, 
 again, you may have a mere passing fancy like 
 "Lydia Hersey of East Bridgewater," who makes 
 the discovery that for a woman really to love a man 
 she must first be dominated by him. Or, once again, 
 belonging to the same genres an imaginative fantasy, 
 with something symbolic in it, like " The Little Maid 
 at the Door," in which the poor, piteous figure of the 
 deserted child of parents charged with witchcraft 
 
 203 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 stands for I know not what of humanity and mercy and 
 loving-kindness at death-grips with the stern cruelty 
 of religious persecution. The last is, of course, a 
 common form with many writers. Maeterlinck 
 affords an obvious example in those little dramatic 
 sketches where each phase and action is nothing in 
 itself, but exists as a symbol of imaginative mysticism. 
 D'Annunzio, too, has tried the same effect in his 
 " Sogno d'un Mattino di Primavera," the little drama 
 acted by Eleonora Duse, in which the heroine, with 
 her wits shattered by a horrible scene of bloodshed, 
 learns a new sense of mystical communion and 
 sympathy with Nature's operations — the rise of the 
 sap in the tree, the growth of leaves, the bursting of 
 buds. But, if I am not mistaken, the real progenitor 
 of Miss Wilkins is Nathaniel Hawthorne. If there 
 ever was a man who understood the conditions of the 
 short story it was the author of " Mosses from an 
 Old Manse," possessing in far greater measure than 
 Miss Wilkins, but using, in much the same spirit, the 
 singular power of suggesting a great deal more than 
 he says. Some day Miss Wilkins may be able to 
 write stories like "The Birthmark," "Young Good- 
 man Brown," and " Rappacini's Daughter." She has 
 not done so yet, but she is inspired by the same ideals 
 and appears to be capable of similarly delicate and 
 exquisite workmanship. 
 
 204 
 
Miss Mary Wilkins 
 
 § 2 
 
 Miss Mary Wilkins may paint on a small canvas, 
 but she is undoubtedly a true artist. From the 
 simple and quiet truthfulness of "A New England 
 Nun" we advance to the firm psychological 
 drawing in " Pembroke," and thence to the dramatic 
 strength and vigour of "Madelon." Miss Wilkins 
 does not disturb the reader with many concurrent 
 threads of narrative, nor does she crowd her scenes 
 with subordinate characters ; everything in her novel 
 is dominated by the central conception of the heroine 
 whose fate we watch with all the more interest 
 because our attention is not distracted by the 
 accessories of the drama. Indeed, it may be said 
 that the whole of her story is Madelon and 
 nothing else — with a picturesque background formed 
 by a New England winter, which accords with her 
 stormy character far better than that burst of spring 
 tenderness and summer warmth with which the 
 authoress closes her narrative. Madelon is so 
 strong, so passionate, so wild an animal that she 
 seems only to touch the fringes of the world of 
 human social life, and in her case domestic felicity 
 and the ordinary joys and sorrows of wifehood and 
 motherhood appear utterly out of place. 
 
 There is much in her ancestry which explains Miss 
 Wilkins' heroine. Madelon Hautville, together with 
 her father and her four brothers, belongs to a wholly 
 different order of life from that which is usually 
 
 205 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 found among the Puritans of New England. The 
 Hautvilles were said to have French and Indian 
 blood in their veins — although it was far back in 
 history, since the first Hautville, who, report said, was 
 of a noble French family, had espoused an Iroquois 
 Indian girl. 
 
 "The sturdy males of the family had handed 
 down the name and the characteristics of the races 
 through years of intermarriage with the English 
 settlers. All the Hautvilles — the father, the four 
 sons, and the daughter — were tall and dark, and 
 straight as arrows, and they all had wondrous grace 
 of manner, which abashed and half offended, while it 
 charmed, the stiff village people. Not a young man 
 in the village, no matter how finely attired in city- 
 made clothing, had the courtly air of these Hautville 
 sons in their rude half-woodland garb. Not a girl, 
 not even Dorothy Fair, could wear a gown of brocade 
 with the grace, inherited from a far-away French 
 grandmother, with which Madelon wore indigo 
 cotton." 
 
 Let us add that the whole family were as musical 
 as a band of troubadours, which made them at once 
 popular and despised. David Hautville, the father, 
 played the bass viol, Louis was a master of the 
 violin, Eugene sang a sonorous tenor, Abner and the 
 youngest son, Richard, contributed bass and treble 
 respectively ; while Madelon stood in the midst of 
 her relations with her marvellous soprano voice 
 dominating the entire harmony. The picture of this 
 strange family is drawn with no little vigour and 
 
 206 
 
Miss Mary Wilkins 
 
 skill. Strangers and foreigners they remained in a 
 land which half feared them, equipped as they were 
 with abnormal qualities so alien to the commonplace 
 nature of their surroundings. 
 
 No one could imagine that Madelon's life was 
 likely under such circumstances to run through 
 smooth channels. At the outset of the tale there 
 are two men who love her, two cousins, Burr Gordon 
 and Lot Gordon, essentially dissimilar in character, 
 just as they differed also in natural strength and 
 beauty. Lot Gordon is more or less of an invalid, 
 with a subtle concentrated nature of his own, in- 
 capable of inspiring affection, but for that very 
 reason, perhaps, bountifully endowed with a wonder- 
 ful power of loving. Burr Gordon is the lighter 
 hearted, more athletic, more inconstant swain, easily 
 led away to flirt with the prim little Puritan girl, 
 Dorothy Fair, while it is only Madelon who can 
 touch the deeper fibres of his being. There is no 
 particular cordiality, of course, between the cousins — 
 all the more because Lot has the money and Burr 
 the good looks, because the former loves and the 
 latter is loved. But Madelon is not one who can 
 deviate from her appointed path through any chance 
 vacillations of sentiment or feeling ; her devotion 
 admits of no change or abatement, and when Burr 
 Gordon, at a village ball, dances with Dorothy Fair 
 rather than with herself, all the wilder characteristics 
 derived from her Indian ancestors burst into acute 
 and energetic life. And now comes the crisis of the 
 story. Leaving the ballroom with mad pulses 
 
 207 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 beating in her veins, she meets in the darkness of 
 her homeward path a man, whom she supposes to be 
 her faithless lover, but who is in reality Lot Gordon, 
 and in a sudden burst of frenzy stabs him in the side. 
 Burr Gordon comes up at the moment, and, in order 
 to screen her from the consequences of the crime, 
 sends her home, while he himself remains by the 
 body of his wounded rival. The notorious jealousy 
 of the cousins affords an easy explanation to the 
 villagers of the real meaning of the tragedy, and 
 while Lot Gordon is taken to his house to recover 
 slowly and painfully of his wound. Burr is hurried to 
 prison in order to stand his trial for an attempted 
 murder. It is from this point that the ceaseless 
 energy and devotion of Madelon begins to assert 
 itself with overwhelming force. She will not allow 
 herself to suppose that the man in prison loves her 
 as she loves him, but nothing must be left undone to 
 rescue him from his undeserved fate, and bring the 
 proper punishment on her own head. From Lot 
 Gordon she can obtain no single word which will 
 help her ; he lies in his bed and refuses to speak, lest 
 the true explanation of the case should bring harm 
 on Madelon. But there are other things to be done 
 to set things straight. Madelon hurries to her rival, 
 Dorothy Fair, and drags her, with or without her 
 consent, to see Burr Gordon in prison, under the hope 
 that he may at least confess to the Puritan girl that 
 he was guiltless of the deed. When this, too, fails — 
 for the captive knows how to keep his secret — 
 Madelon walks ten miles in the midst of a terrible 
 
 308 
 
Miss Mary Wilkins 
 
 frost to one of the guests at the ball, who, she hopes, 
 can help her in explaining her sole responsibility for 
 the crime. This walk of ten miles is a marvel of 
 descriptive force — one of the passages which stamps 
 Miss Wilkins as an accomplished delineator of New 
 England nature. 
 
 "The pasture lands were hummocked with ice- 
 coated rocks and hooped with frozen bines ; they 
 seemed to flow down in glittering waves, like glaciers, 
 over the hillsides. The woods stood white and 
 petrified, as woods might have done in a glacial era. 
 There was no sound in them, except now and then 
 the crack of a bough under the weight of ice, and 
 slow, painful responses, like the tawngs of musty 
 harp-strings to the harder gusts of wind. The cold 
 was so intense that the ice did not melt in the noon- 
 day sun, and there were no soft droppings and 
 gurglings to modify this white rigour of light and 
 sound. Occasionally a rabbit crossed Madelon's path, 
 silent as a little gray scudding shadow, and so swiftly 
 that he did not reach one's consciousness until he 
 was out of sight." 
 
 Nothing can quell Madelon's fiery vigour, even 
 when this painful journey fails to bring her the 
 evidence she requires. Without stint or stay, she 
 still works hard for the incarcerated man — albeit 
 that she says to herself that he loves not her, but 
 Dorothy Fair. At last she makes Lot Gordon 
 speak, by that sheer impetuosity of hers which can 
 take no denial; but he will only consent, on the 
 condition that Madelon marries him, to assert that 
 
 209 p 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 his own hand had struck the blow. At all events, 
 this confession will save Burr Gordon, and that is all 
 that Madelon cares about. Other things may take 
 their course if only he be saved. 
 
 Up to this point we have a firm and consistent 
 portraiture ; but it is difficult to imagine how Miss 
 Wilkins could have brought herself to suppose that 
 either poetic justice or psychology required a happy 
 ending for this imbroglio. Madelon, the wild creature 
 of the woods, was, of course, only half civilized, and 
 she would have been better placed in the older time, 
 when her forefathers hunted through the snow, or 
 broke the ice on the river for fish. The staid and 
 primitive order of a New England village weighed 
 too heavily on her spirits ; she could not tune her 
 character to the commonplace melodies which sufficed 
 for Puritan girls like Dorothy Fair. But for this 
 very reason Nature and life were bound to be hard 
 on her ; we cannot fancy her either as a wife or 
 mother. Nevertheless the authoress makes, in the 
 long run, everything come right, to the wonted 
 sound of marriage bells. When the moment arrives 
 for the performance of her promise. Lot Gordon 
 releases Madelon from her word, Dorothy Fair 
 suddenly shows a partiality for Eugene Hautville 
 and relinquishes Burr for her rival ; and even when 
 Lot Gordon's wound threatens to burst out afresh, 
 and so imperil the dawning happiness of Madelon, 
 the wounded man chooses to turn his own hands 
 against his life, and thus leave no doubt behind him 
 as to how he died. All this patching of frayed and 
 
 210 
 
Miss Mary Wilkins 
 
 broken threads, this healing of discords and difficulties 
 with more or less commonplace expedients, serve 
 only to dim and darken the original portrait of 
 Madelon. Pictured as she was, she could never have 
 gained the trivial and normal happiness of the girls 
 and boys around her. She belonged to another stock, 
 and bore within her a different destiny. Perhaps 
 Miss Wilkins' design is to bring out the character of 
 Lot Gordon, and to prove that in his case the essence 
 of a perfected love is self-sacrifice. Certainly his 
 character grows in strength and intensity as the novel 
 progresses, but in the same proportion Madelon's 
 seems to grow weaker. She is only at her best and 
 truest when, maddened with despair and without one 
 thought for herself, she is daring every expedient to 
 save the man in prison, to prove to an unbelieving 
 world that she is a wilful murderess, and to release 
 from unjust constraint Burr Gordon — not that he 
 might wed her, but be united with Dorothy Fair. 
 This is the original Madelon, with her fiery un- 
 regulated instincts, her passionate love, her unwaver- 
 ing strength and devotion ; and even if she had died 
 in all her ancestral savagery, the reader might have 
 felt more content than to see her at the end of the 
 tale linking her life with a man in every sense 
 unworthy of her, and transferring the crown of sejf- 
 sacrifice from her own brows to those of the suicide, 
 Lot Gordon. 
 
 211 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 §3 
 
 We have already said that Miss Mary Wilkins 
 is an artist. But it still remains to specify the 
 kind and quality of the work which she can do 
 so well, the limits within which her powers are 
 exercised, the particular range of her capacity. 
 " The Portion of Labour " — which, with all respect 
 to the great American public, we prefer to spell in 
 our insular way — is very significant in this regard, for 
 it is one of the longest, in some respects one of the 
 finest, in other respects one of the least satisfactory 
 of all the novels she has written. It is exceedingly 
 long, not so much in the mere matter of pages, 
 although these count up to as many as 563, but because 
 of the irritating slowness of the development. Many 
 of the chapters are little works of art in themselves, 
 each occupied with a specific incident elaborated with 
 consummate care. But the total result is disappointing, 
 because at the end it seems like a collection of small 
 stories, an amalgamation of carefully written episodes. 
 The sense of proportion, which is one of the instinctive 
 gifts of the artist, is wanting here ; the reader cannot 
 get hold of the main incidents, because every incident 
 seems to occupy a front place in the picture. It is 
 the old difficulty that you cannot realize the pattern 
 because of the finely finished detail, that you cannot 
 see the wood for the trees. Miss Wilkins is a great 
 artist, but she is not an artist of the big canvas. Her 
 skill is that of a Meissonier, and no amount of little 
 
 212 
 
Miss Mary Wilkins 
 
 Meissoniers can resemble a decorative tableau by 
 Puvis de Chavannes. 
 
 In what sense, then, is " The Portion of Labour " 
 one of the finest of her works ? Primarily, no doubt, 
 because it is inspired by a serious purpose, or, to 
 speak more accurately, it is occupied with a sombre, 
 gigantic, impressive theme. Here and there the 
 authoress lets us see what is in her mind in all these 
 five hundred odd pages. We have it indicated in the 
 very last page. The world is a working world, the 
 man who does no work has no place, no right to 
 exist. More than that, labour is not an end in itself, 
 nor can we easily reckon its value by putting down 
 to its credit the various magnificent successes it has 
 been able to accomplish. Doubtless labour accom- 
 plishes the tasks of the world, just as from another 
 and a lower standpoint it helps to accumulate the 
 silver and gold, which, in their turn, provide fresh 
 opportunities for labour. So, too, work adds to the 
 sum of human happiness and love ; but that, again, 
 is an extraneous, an alien end. The real justification 
 for a world in which labour is the principal element 
 is the development of character. No man can touch 
 work and be unaltered. He becomes better or worse, 
 higher or lower, according to the temperament that 
 is in him. Nor from this point of view can we make 
 any distinction between different kinds of work. All 
 labour has a dignity of its own, dependent not upon 
 itself, but upon its reactions on the mind of the 
 labourer. The material element counts for nothing ; 
 it is the spirit that quickeneth. 
 
 213 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 That is one of the main topics of the book before 
 us, not obtrusively set forth, but only to be gathered 
 in retrospect when we have waded through all the 
 sixty-one chapters. And there is no better illustra- 
 tion of it than the scene when the little heroine, Ellen 
 Brewster, who has the opportunity of going to college 
 and educating herself, decides, for the sake of her 
 father and her home, that she will become a humble 
 operative in a shoe factory. The passage is wrought 
 as carefully as is all Miss Wilkins' work. 
 
 " Ellen laughed. * I'm not scared,' said she. Then 
 they entered the factory, humming with machinery, 
 and a sensation which she had not anticipated was 
 over her. Scared she was not ; she was fairly 
 exultant. All at once she entered a vast room in 
 which eager men were already at the machines with 
 frantic zeal, as if they were driving labour herself. 
 When she felt the vibration of the floor under her 
 feet, when she saw people spring to their stations of 
 toil, as if springing to guns in a battle, she realized 
 the might and grandeur of it all. Suddenly it seemed 
 to her that the greatest thing in the whole world was 
 work, and that this was one of the greatest forms of 
 work — to cover the feet of progress of the traveller of 
 the earth from the cradle to the grave. She saw that 
 these great factories, and the strength of this army 
 of the sons and daughters of toil, made possible 
 the advance of civilization itself, which cannot go 
 barefoot. She realized all at once and for ever the 
 dignity of labour, this girl of the people with a brain 
 which enabled her to overlook the heads of the rank 
 
 214 
 
Miss Mary Wilkins 
 
 and file of which she herself formed a part. She 
 never again, whatever her regret might have been for 
 another life for which she was better fitted, which her 
 taste preferred, had any sense of ignominy in this. 
 She never again felt that she was too good for her 
 labour, for labour had revealed itself to her like a 
 goddess behind a sordid veil. Abby and Maria 
 looked at her wonderingly ; no other girl had ever 
 entered Lloyd's with such a look on her face." 
 
 The heroine herself is one of the most elaborate 
 pieces of portraiture in these pages. The character is 
 built up with an infinity of little touches. We see her 
 first in her New England home, a sensitive, dreamy 
 child, who runs away because she felt that she was an 
 incumbrance rather than a help to her parents. For 
 some days she remained in the house of Cynthia 
 Lennox, who loved her with a fierce maternal in- 
 stinct, a thwarted love to which Destiny had denied 
 any natural outlet. Even after Ellen Brewster has run 
 away once more to her own house, Cynthia remains 
 her constant friend, and it is she who is anxious to 
 send the girl to college, where there might be some 
 scope for her ability. But Ellen lives amid very 
 humble surroundings. Her father, Andrew, gets 
 more and more incapable of work as the years go 
 on ; her mother and her aunt represent lower, more 
 sordid types than that which belonged to herself; 
 the thousand worries and agonies of a life passed in 
 debt and poverty crowd upon the girl's intelligence, 
 and yet help to educate her and bring out all that is 
 noble and self-denying in her nature. Then love 
 
 215 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 comes in her way, first the boyish love of Granville 
 Toy, afterwards the more mature affection of Robert 
 Lloyd, considerably above Ellen's station in life — 
 one, in fact, of the proprietors who manage the big 
 factory of the town. Meanwhile Ellen, working at 
 her manual toil, seeing before her every day the hard, 
 fierce grind of the labourer, his ceaseless toil, his 
 scanty rewards, enlists herself heart and soul on the 
 side of the operative against his employer. Here is 
 an added difficulty in her path, for although her 
 heart goes out in innocent affectionateness to Robert 
 Lloyd, her instincts and her intellectual sympathies 
 are wholly with the class amongst which she lives. 
 It all comes right in the end, but only after much 
 tribulation and anguish of spirit. Both Robert 
 Lloyd and Ellen Brewster learn a great deal of 
 the worth and honesty of their respective attitudes 
 towards modern industrial problems. There is 
 no solution suggested of the everlasting quarrel 
 between capital and labour, except so far as a quick 
 sympathy and instinctive helpfulness serve to smooth 
 all such antagonisms. It is something for Ellen to 
 learn the responsibilities of the employer ; it is much 
 more for Robert to appreciate the dignity and self- 
 respect of the worker. 
 
 Thus we discover a second reason why "The 
 Portion of Labour " is a fine piece of work. It is so 
 because of the scrupulous care spent over the develop- 
 ment of the characters. The book is a gallery of 
 portraits, each of them with those distinctive marks 
 which make them real and vital. Apart from Ellen 
 
 216 
 
Miss Mary Wilkins 
 
 and Robert, there is the Brewster household — Andrew, 
 the patient, loving, inefficient father ; Fanny, the 
 mother ; Eva, the aunt, with the tragedy of her life 
 history ; and the cold, rigid, upright grandmother, 
 appropriately called Mrs. Zelotes Brewster. Cynthia 
 Lennox has been already mentioned, but there are 
 also Norman Lloyd and his wife, and Lyman Risley 
 — an incisive little sketch of a peculiar type — to 
 represent the capitalist class ; while on the other side 
 we have a series of vignettes of factory hands too 
 numerous to mention, boys and girls, men and 
 women, violent, eager, animated personalities, each 
 with a distinctive rdle in the evolution of the story. 
 Miss Mary Wilkins is not niggardly in her portraiture. 
 She pours before us all the rich stores of her experi- 
 ence and her imagination. Indeed, as has already 
 been suggested, there is too much wealth ; we should 
 have valued it more if there had not been such a pro- 
 fusion of gold and silver and copper in her medallions. 
 Only in the last place need the style be referred 
 to — full of a quiet beauty, never existing for its own 
 sake, strictly subordinate to the purposes of the 
 narrative. Here and there we have little gems of 
 description, carelessly strewn before us with a regally 
 profuse hand. " Ellen stroked her father's thin grey 
 hair with exactly the same tender touch with which 
 he had so often stroked her golden locks. It was an 
 inheritance of love, reverting to its original source." 
 Or take this : " After all friendship and good 
 comradeship are a steadier force than love, if not as 
 overwhelming, and it may be that tortoise of the 
 
 217 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 emotions which outruns the hare." Or once more, 
 dealing with the effect of woman's beauty or man's 
 devotion : " * Jim don't act as if he thought so much 
 of me, an I dunno as I wonder,' she told her sister. 
 Fanny looked at her critically. * You mean you ain't 
 so good looking as you used to be,' said she. Eva 
 nodded. * Well, if that is all men care for us,' said 
 Fanny. * It ain't,' said Eva, * only it's the key to it. 
 It's like losing the key and not bein' able to get in 
 the door in consequence.' " The book is full of things 
 like these, so full that they are apt to be over- 
 looked in the mass of material. Nevertheless, from a 
 purely artistic standpoint, if we look solely at the 
 best mode of expression of which the authoress is 
 capable, the verdict must be that Miss Wilkins' 
 supreme gift is the pastel, not the historical canvas. 
 
 §4 
 
 When we come to her stories of the super- 
 natural it must be owned that they are strangely 
 disappointing. It is not, of course, given to every 
 one to interest, to absorb — to make us feel that the 
 unnatural is natural, to give us that delightful 
 shudder which is the essence of the true ghost story. 
 But, so far as "The Wind in the Rose-Bush" 
 is concerned, such gifts clearly do not belong to 
 Miss Wilkins, and it seems a pity that she ever 
 consented to publish the book. She is so good a 
 narrator of the simple, the elemental, the prettily 
 
 218 
 
Miss Mary Wilkins 
 
 pathetic ; she draws with so sympathetic a pencil the 
 figures of a New England world which move in 
 response to easily discernible motives, and are 
 occupied with objects and interests of a wide and 
 familiar appeal, that, except from the point of view 
 of increasing her range and scope as a novelist, it 
 is difficult to see why she should have attempted 
 to exercise her industry in new fields. Once, and 
 once ,only, in the volume does Miss Wilkins attain 
 her customary level, and then it is because she has 
 hit upon a theme which is akin to her own instincts 
 and predilections. In the last of her tales of the 
 supernatural she tells the story of the ghost of a little 
 child who had been abandoned and starved to death 
 by an unfeeling mother — a pretty little pathetic 
 figure of suffering, with no language but the cry, " I 
 cannot find my mother." It was a useful little ghost, 
 assuredly, for if any one in, the house which it haunted 
 left wraps or cloaks about, or any strenuous housewife 
 desired to have plates washed and dried, the little 
 child-ghost at once found an opportunity for helpful 
 service. Moreover, its patience was fully rewarded 
 in the sequel, for one of the two women who lived in 
 the house, a childless widow, understood, by some 
 process of maternal comprehension, the forlorn little 
 wastrel, and on her somewhat sudden death was seen 
 taking the quite contented and happy child away 
 with her in her arms. Here are just the elements of 
 sentimental pathos which Miss Wilkins can manage, 
 and the story is consequently quite an amiable piece 
 of unartificial supernaturalism. 
 
 219 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 But of the others, what are we to say ? They are 
 almost grotesque in their suggestion of wholly trivial 
 and unnecessary incidents ; they have no power of 
 translating us into another atmosphere ; they fail in 
 the elementary condition of inspiring a pleasant 
 terror. A woman discovers that a rosebush can be 
 violently agitated without any wind, and thereby is 
 instructed that a niece of hers has been done to 
 death. A brother has a dispute with another brother 
 which ends fatally ; he is therefore haunted by a 
 shadow on the wall, and when in despair he does 
 away with himself there are two shadows on the wall. 
 A girl called Luella Miller, indolent, selfish, and 
 fascinating, is apparently possessed of the diabolical 
 power of slowly killing every one who is brought into 
 contact with her. Perhaps she has the evil eye ; 
 perhaps she distils around her a subtle kind of 
 poison. But whether she asserts her power con- 
 sciously, or whether she is herself the victim of an 
 unkind fate, we do not know, and we do not much 
 care. To be told that at the last she is seen coming 
 out of her house with all the ghosts of those whom 
 she has done away with hanging on to her arms, and 
 forming an uncanny retinue, might produce the 
 requisite shiver if the writer had chosen to describe 
 the scene with picturesque subtlety ; but as the 
 matter stands, Luella, whether agent of mischief, 
 or herself patiently expiating a curse, is wholly 
 uninteresting. The case is the same with two 
 other stories — "The South- West Chamber" and 
 "The Vacant Lot." A fierce old aunt haunts the 
 
 220 
 
Miss Mary Wilkins 
 
 south-west chamber and plays stupid tricks, changing 
 the counterpane on the bed, and the hangings of the 
 room, putting her own clothes back into the cupboard 
 instead of the clothes of the visitor, and finally 
 peering out of the looking-glass in which her niece 
 only expected to find her own commonplace face. 
 Or else, as in " The Vacant Lot," we have a troop of 
 miserable-looking people in long gowns who occupy 
 themselves with hanging up their own washing, or 
 expressing mute indignation at an old signboard 
 which had been made part of the panelling, and 
 which in some dim way revived the memory of a 
 long-forgotten crime. These are not the details 
 which move and arrest the reader ; they do not make 
 him shudder ; they only make him laugh. 
 
 There would be no point in criticizing a book like 
 this unless it suggested certain considerations on the 
 proper use and management of the supernatural in 
 fiction. Take the recognized literary successes in 
 this department — the tales of Edgar Allen Poe, or 
 some of the studies of Nathaniel Hawthorne, or those 
 of Bulwer Lytton, or the weird suggestiveness of 
 " Wuthering Heights," or a book like " Uncle Silas," 
 by Le Fanu. The list could, of course, be prolonged 
 indefinitely, for there are one or two tales of Mr. 
 Henry James, of George Eliot, and of Mrs. Oliphant 
 essentially worthy of notice in this reference. Under 
 what conditions and by the exercise of what powers 
 do writers like these manage to hold us enthralled } 
 You may be as grotesque as you like, so long as you 
 appeal to dominant feelings and passions in mankind. 
 
 221 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 You may be quite arbitrary in the management of 
 your plot, so long as you make the unnatural appear 
 the necessary and the inevitable. You may de- 
 liberately take the moonlight as Hawthorne did — 
 " moonlight in a familiar room falling white upon the 
 carpet" — as the best medium for a romance-writer 
 to get acquainted with his illusive guests. Or you 
 may deal merely with the ordinary aspects of 
 existence as Poe sometimes did, and yet make them 
 instinct with some hidden and mysterious influences, 
 bursting with a life alien from, and greater than their 
 own. You may tell the reader from the very 
 beginning that you are going to make his flesh creep, 
 or you may take him by the hand in his ordinary 
 habit as he lives, and, by a sudden whisk of the 
 magician's rod, cause the solid things around him to 
 disappear and the ordinary sunlight to change itself 
 into some awful and glimmering gloom. But one in- 
 dispensable condition throughout is that the writer 
 of the ghost tale must be extremely careful and 
 accurate in his detail in order to produce the illusion 
 of veri-similitude. Not any kind of detail will suffice, 
 however — Miss Wilkins uses a lot of detail — but it 
 must be appropriate, suggestive, illuminative detail. 
 It is of no use thinking that the change in a chintz 
 from peacocks on a blue ground to red roses on a 
 yellow ground, as in Miss Wilkins' " The South- West 
 Chamber," causes us any thrill. We want rather that 
 sudden shock which a detective officer might feel 
 when some little point in the room he is exploring, 
 or some bit of jewellery or adornment in the person 
 
 222 
 
Miss Mary Wilkins 
 
 suspected, suddenly confirms his anticipation or his 
 theory — the kind of detail which Poe gives us in 
 "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," "The Mystery 
 of Marie Roget," " The Purloined Letter," and " The 
 Gold Bug." Indeed, it is in the choice of the 
 appropriate accessories that a writer of supernatural 
 romance shows his power. 
 
 But this is not all. A good ghost story must be 
 really dramatic, and therefore involve a careful study 
 and contrast of personalities. So far as can be seen, 
 Miss Mary Wilkins is wholly devoid of the dramatic 
 instinct ; at all events, in her " Stories of the Super- 
 natural " the personages are dull, characterless, lay 
 figures. We want a real plot, which the dramatis 
 personcB are to carry out for the most part uncon- 
 sciously and unwillingly, a real struggle in their 
 minds between what they would like to do and what 
 they are forced to do, between free volition and 
 tyrannical fate. It does not much matter whether we 
 quite understand the intention of the author or not. 
 Take, for instance, Hawthorne's stories, " The 
 Wedding Knell," " Young Goodman Brown," " Roger 
 Malvin's Burial." In these the meaning is certainly 
 somewhat intricate and remote. But there must be 
 a real study of character and situations, as, for 
 instance, in Hawthorne's " Rappacini's Daughter " — 
 a wonderful short story, which could easily have 
 been expanded, had the author thought fit, into an 
 elaborate romance. To live in other people's lives, 
 to understand them better than they do themselves, 
 to learn some secret about them of which they are 
 
 223 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 for the most part unaware, to prove the inevitableness 
 of fate, and the relative impotence of human activity 
 — these things are the nerve and tissue of ghost 
 stories, without which they may be, like Miss Wilkins', 
 pretty and graceful, or even like some of the stories 
 of Mr. Hichens, curious and interesting, but cannot 
 possess us with a sense of their reality, cannot grip 
 and enchain us, like the best work of Hawthorne 
 and Poe. 
 
 224 
 
DIARffiS AND LOVE-LETTERS 
 
DIARIES AND LOVE-LETTERS 
 
 § I 
 
 ABELARD AND HELOISE 
 
 THAT a man should be born before his time is 
 as picturesquely true as it is scientifically false. 
 The man who starts a new revolution, and whom we 
 therefore look back upon as the initiator of a new 
 epoch, is only he whose ears first catch the under- 
 ground murmurs of a coming change. To his suc- 
 cessors, who have become habituated to a later 
 intellectual atmosphere, the hero who first began 
 the revolt seems almost like a preternatural growth ; 
 the scientific historian knows how the ground was 
 prepared, and the seed sown in fostering places. 
 Nevertheless, the dramatic significance of a figure 
 is not lessened by the discovery that he was not so 
 original as he appeared to be ; nor will any one, 
 for instance, take away the crown of a modern 
 rationalism from the brow of Abelard because he 
 had predecessors in Scotus Erigena and Roscellin. 
 
 What is to us the importance of Peter Abelard ? 
 The answer is not difficult. Here was a man in the 
 twelfth century, who, if he did not begin, at least 
 represented in its most energetic and vital form, the 
 
 227 Q 2 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 criticism of reason on matters of faith. That is one 
 fact which reveals the significance of the man, for 
 right away through many succeeding centuries, down 
 to the eighteenth, or perhaps even to the middle of 
 the nineteenth century, the old struggle has con- 
 tinued between a mystical faith and a free spirit of 
 logical inquiry. Shall faith precede reason, or reason 
 be satisfied before faith begins ? That is the main 
 point at issue between the theologians and the 
 philosophers, the logicians and the devout, the 
 mediaeval and the modern worlds. On the one 
 hand there is the position of a St. Anselm, " I be- 
 lieve, because it is impossible ; " and on the other, 
 the attitude of an Abelard, " that I must understand 
 before I can believe." The combat which Abelard 
 waged in his day has been repeated over and over 
 again in the annals of history. Why the Reforma- 
 tion did not happen in the thirteenth century was 
 one of the questions which puzzled Renan. Assuredly 
 the attitude of free inquiry began many centuries 
 before it attained the proportions of a systematic 
 revolt against Rome ; and Abelard, struggling against 
 St. Bernard of Clairvaux, is, when all the due his- 
 torical deductions and exceptions are made, Luther 
 struggling against Leo X., Jowett and Huxley 
 struggling against the theological doctors at Oxford, 
 The Roman Church is quick to learn and to adapt 
 itself to changing conditions. Nowadays, there are 
 very few indeed who would side with Bernardism, 
 and a large and increasing number who will agree 
 with what Mr. McCabe calls Abelard's " penetrating 
 
 228 
 
Abelard and Heloise 
 
 and reconstructive criticisms" on the meaning of 
 original sin, the Trinity, the Incarnation, Inspiration, 
 Omnipotence, and the doctrines of reward and 
 punishment. 
 
 But this is not the only feature which makes 
 Peter Abelard speak to us so many centuries after 
 his death. It is rarely enough that in the case of 
 a learned doctor of the Church we are able to 
 penetrate behind the traditional authority which his 
 name wields to the simple human elements of a 
 personality. The reason why we said that Abelard 
 lived before his time is largely due to the entire 
 consistency between what we know of his life and 
 what we have learnt of his teaching. Of all those 
 pallid ecclesiastical figures which the historian recalls 
 for us from the buried treasures of the past, there 
 are few so intensely alive, so vividly human, so pal- 
 pitating with the ordinary impulses of a complex 
 human character as Peter Abelard. He was learned 
 beyond the learning of his age — a great Aristotelian, 
 a man who upset the current doctrines of philosophical 
 realism, and substituted for them what is called 
 nominalism, or perhaps a half-veiled conceptualism. 
 His victory in this matter is unimportant enough to 
 us now, or at most is valuable in the history of the 
 development of logic. But let us forget " the Socrates 
 of Gaul," the peer of Plato and of Aristotle, as he 
 was described by his contemporaries. His victories 
 in the philosophical domain are part and parcel 
 of the humanity, the reasonableness of a figure who 
 was a good deal more flesh and blood than his 
 
 229 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 contemporaries, and who represented manhood alike 
 in its lofty thoughts and its common defects. After 
 dialectical triumphs gained over William of Cham- 
 peaux, he arrives in Paris, thirty-seven years of age, 
 a recognized popular idoL He had worked very 
 hard hitherto, and, like other less distinguished 
 students, began to find that he had omitted out of 
 his scheme of life some emotional and sentimental 
 interests. His adversaries later in life called him all 
 sorts of ugly names as a sensualist ; but there is no 
 reason to suppose that he did more than fall in love 
 with a young girl named Heloise, niece of the Canon 
 Fulbert — not a beautiful girl, but extremely attractive 
 and interesting, clever, intellectual, and possessed of 
 a very remarkable character of her own — who was 
 about twenty years younger than he was. 
 
 There was no disguise in Abelard's affection, for 
 he wrote songs about her which were quoted in Paris ; 
 nor was there any doubt that the lady repaid her 
 lover's affection with interest. When the matter 
 could no longer be concealed from Fulbert, Abelard 
 proposed marriage, under the condition that it should 
 be kept secret, probably in order to appease the fury 
 of the uncle. Heloise would have nothing to do 
 with marriage, whether secret or private, because 
 she had formed the liaison with her eyes open, and 
 refused to mar Abelard's prospects of advancement 
 in the Church. She was a singularly independent 
 young lady — a rationalist, who had not learnt for 
 nothing the lessons which her lover had given her, 
 not only in Latin, or even in Greek or Hebrew, but 
 
 230 
 
Abelard and Hcloise 
 
 in religious and ethical criticism. She had to yield 
 the point of marriage, however, very much against 
 her will, perhaps foreboding what would occur. For 
 then came the most dramatic punishment which has 
 ever been inflicted on a man who wished to preserve 
 his chances in life and yet indulge his secret passion. 
 Fulbert had been sworn to secrecy, but he soon 
 began to tell the truth ; and when Heloise, true to 
 her singular purpose, boldly denied the marriage, the 
 furious uncle designed and executed that terrible 
 revenge which has become notorious in history. To 
 the " Idol of Paris " there only remained the life of 
 a monk ; and Heloise, not yet twenty, obeying the 
 demands of his jealous love, completed her task of 
 self-sacrifice, and took- the veil. 
 
 Henceforth the lives of this devoted pair assumed 
 very different shapes. As we all know, their joint 
 tomb is exhibited to the tourist in Pere Lachaise ; 
 but it was many years before this final union was 
 accomplished. Heloise lived in the convent at 
 Argenteuil — a quiet, devoted existence, as the head 
 of a new religious house. Abelard passed through 
 successive storms of controversy — first in the Oratory 
 of the Paraclete, then at the Abbey of St. Gildas, 
 finally at the Abbey of Cluny. There was no peace 
 for him, for religious persecution, in the person 
 especially of Bernard of Clairvaux, had marked him 
 for its prey, and the threats of a violent death, or the 
 constantly overhanging charge of heresy, harassed 
 and enfeebled his declining years. First buried at 
 St. Marcel, his remains were subsequently given 
 
 231 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 over to the loving care of Heloise, who in time came 
 herself to rest beside them. Shifted more than once, 
 the bones of the pair seem to have been preserved 
 through all the vicissitudes of the French Revolution, 
 and now they lie together amidst the soldiers and 
 statesmen, the actors and the courtesans of Paris. 
 What we, however, remember is not all the panorama 
 of storm and stress during the last years of Abelard's 
 life, but the wonderful letters which, after twenty 
 years of silence from the time when Heloise took the 
 veil, were exchanged between the nun at Argenteuil 
 and the monk at St. Gildas. Abelard had been 
 moved to write a record of his sufferings, " Historia 
 Calamitatum," and then Heloise opened her heart 
 to him in one of the most extraordinary letters which 
 has ever been penned by an unselfish woman. He, 
 as in duty bound, preached resignation to her, 
 writing the careful logical sentences of a man who 
 had no duty left to him towards her except that of 
 a spiritual director to a pupil — or, at most, a brother 
 to a sister. But how she wrote to him, at all events 
 in the first letter, can best be seen in a single 
 extract — 
 
 "At thy command I would change, not merely 
 my costume, but my very soul, so entirely art thou 
 the possessor of my body and my spirit. Never, 
 God is my witness, have I sought anything in thee 
 but thyself; I have sought thee, not thy gifts. I 
 have not looked to the marriage bond or dowry ; 
 I have not even yearned to satisfy my own will and 
 pleasure, but thine, as thou well knowest. The name 
 
 232 
 
Abelard and Heloise 
 
 of wife may be the holier and more approved, but the 
 name of friend has always been the sweeter to me. 
 For in thus humbling myself for thee, I should win 
 greater favour from thee, and do less injury to thy 
 greatness. This thou hast thyself not wholly for- 
 gotten in the aforesaid letter thou hast written for 
 the consolation of a friend. Therein also thou hast 
 related some of the arguments with which I essayed 
 to turn thee from the thought of our unhappy wed- 
 lock, though thou hast omitted many in which I set 
 forth the advantage of love over matrimony, freedom 
 over bondage. God is my witness, that if Augustus, 
 the emperor of the whole world, were to honour me 
 with the thought of wedlock, and yield me the empire 
 of the universe, I should deem it more precious and 
 more honourable to be thy mistress than to be the 
 queen of a Caesar." 
 
 She became more resigned afterwards, but she 
 never wavered in her devotion. That is why her 
 name has become the very pattern of love, why she 
 set the example for the "Portuguese letters," and 
 for Rousseau's "Nouvelle Heloise." That is why I 
 have made allusion to her in these pages. The 
 woman who could feel and express this passion, the 
 man who was able to inspire it, ought to appeal with 
 remarkable force to an age which seems to have 
 recovered some of the eighteenth-century fashion of 
 love-letters. Even the indiscriminating tourist who 
 goes to P6re Lachaise dimly feels that he is offering 
 incense at the tomb of a hero and a heroine whose 
 names are immortal. 
 
 233 
 
§ 2 
 
 DOROTHY OSBORNE'S LOVE-LETTERS 
 
 "/^^AN there be a more romantic story than ours 
 vy would make," wrote Dorothy Osborne, in one 
 of her ktters, " if the conclusion should prove happy ? 
 Ah, I dare not hope it." Nevertheless, the confidence 
 of this strenuous young lover was justified, and after 
 some seven years of courtship Dorothy Osborne was 
 united to Sir William Temple. To most of us the 
 story of this seventeenth-century wooing is familiar 
 through Macaulay's Essay on Courtenay's " Life of 
 Temple," but many readers will be aware that a very 
 complete edition of the lady's letters was produced 
 by Mr. Edward Abbott Parry fifty years after the 
 biography of Courtenay. Macaulay, it will be remem- 
 bered, subscribed himself as one of the most gallant 
 and loyal of Dorothy's " servants." Her latest advo- 
 cate is Mr. Israel GoUancz, who, in the series known 
 as " the King's Classics," has published a singularly 
 pretty and complete edition of some of the most 
 charming love-letters in the world. They do not 
 pretend to be either literature or history, yet in some 
 senses they are better than either. They tell us more 
 of the intimate life of a fairly cultivated young girl of 
 the seventeenth century than we could derive from 
 the memoirs of any dry-as-dust historian, while at the 
 
 234 
 
Dorothy Osborne's Love^Letters 
 
 same time, written with a careless spontaneity of their 
 own, they possess the enduring charm of unstudied 
 personal effusions, penned in haste for the eye of a 
 passionate lover alone, and yet worthy of sincere 
 homage from colder and more indifferent readers. 
 
 Sir William Temple was a young man of promise, 
 who, by his lineage and antecedents, belonged more 
 or less to the Parliamentary party — at all events, to 
 the more orthodox section before Oliver Cromwell 
 established a Protectorate of his own. Dorothy 
 Osborne was a Royalist, the daughter of a man who 
 suffered for his attachment to King Charles, and who, 
 indeed, held Guernsey for the Royal cause. When 
 William Temple finished his academic career at 
 Cambridge, having succeeded in forgetting all the 
 Greek he once knew — a fact which did not prevent 
 him in after life from arguing with Bentley over the 
 authenticity of the celebrated Letters of Phalaris — he 
 set out on his travels, like many young men of his 
 position, in order to make some acquaintance with 
 France and the Continent. In the Isle of Wight, 
 Temple met the Osbornes, father, son, and daughter, 
 and was witness of a scene which powerfully aroused 
 his interest in Dorothy. Dorothy's brother scribbled 
 on a pane of glass a gibe at the Parliamentarians in 
 the words, *' Haman was hanged on the gallows they 
 had prepared for Mordecai.'* This thoughtless act 
 was only too likely to lead the author into trouble, 
 and, as a matter of fact, the whole party was put under 
 arrest. Dorothy, presuming, like the true woman 
 that she was, on the privileges of her sex, took the 
 
 235 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 entire blame upon herself, and it is pleasant to read 
 that the Roundheads were chivalrous enough to 
 excuse a woman for any playful irreverence against 
 the ruling powers. But the incident made a deep 
 impression on the susceptible William Temple, and, 
 indeed, from this time date the intimacy and friend- 
 ship which speedily ripened into love. For the next 
 seven years or so, from 1647 to 1654, the engagement, 
 such as it was, continued, and for two out of those 
 years we have the series of letters, lively, graceful, 
 affectionate, and thoroughly human and natural, which 
 the young lady wrote to her liege lord. In their case 
 the course of true love ran anything but smooth. 
 Dorothy's father, a stern old Royalist, did not pretend 
 to like the match with a man associated, in however 
 small a degree, with the Parliamentarians. Her 
 brothers were even more actively opposed, and the 
 lady herself was besieged by several admirers, who 
 did their best to divert her constancy and lead it into 
 other channels. 
 
 In the first of the letters, for instance, Dorothy 
 tells us, in her amusing fashion, of a good many of 
 these " servants " of hers, as she was fond of calling 
 them. Some friends that had observed " a gravity in 
 her face, which might become an elderly man's wife," 
 proposed a widower to her, who had four daughters 
 all old enough to be her sisters. This was Sir Justinian 
 Isham, as fine a gentleman as ever England bred, and 
 so much the very pattern of wisdom, and filled with 
 such proper regard for himself, that Dorothy nick- 
 named him " the Emperor." She did not pretend to 
 
 236 
 
Dorothy Osborne's Love^Lcttcrs 
 
 like him — indeed, at times she spoke very irreverently 
 of his qualities ; yet, with the coquetry which was one 
 of her most charming traits, she showed herself by no 
 means best pleased when " Sir Jus " led another lady 
 to the altar. A second suitor was her cousin, Sir 
 Thomas Osborne. But perhaps the most serious of 
 her admirers was Henry Cromwell, the younger son 
 of the Protector, a man who, knowing the fair lady's 
 tastes, took a great deal of trouble in procuring for 
 her an Irish greyhound. With her family, meanwhile, 
 Dorothy was constantly at war, and she describes 
 with a good deal of wit the trouble she had in 
 defending Sir William Temple against the criticisms 
 of her brother. " All the people that I had ever in 
 my life refused were brought again upon the stage, 
 like Richard III.'s ghosts, to reproach me withal, and 
 all the kindness his discoveries could make I had for 
 you was laid to my charge. My best qualities (if I 
 have any that are good) served but for aggravations 
 of my fault, and I was allowed to have wit and under- 
 standing and discretion in other things, that it might 
 appear I had none in this. Well, 'twas a pretty 
 lecture, and I grew warm with it after a while. In 
 short, we came so near an absolute falling out that 
 'twas time to give over, and we said so much then 
 that we have hardly spoken a word together since. 
 But 'tis wonderful to see what Curtseys and Legs 
 pass between us ; and, as before, we were thought the 
 kindest brother and sister, we are certainly now the 
 most complimental couple in England." Poor Dorothy 
 seems to have had anything but a happy time ; yet 
 
 237 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 through it all, in her half-serious, half-humorous, and 
 wholly adorable fashion, she was as staunch a lover 
 as any man could desire. Even at the very end of 
 her probation, just when the marriage was settled, 
 fate dealt her the unkindest blow — she fell a victim 
 to the small-pox, and got up from her bed of sickness 
 with her beauty spoilt for ever. To the honour of his 
 sex, Sir William Temple married her, all the same, 
 and had his reward in a few years of restful and 
 perfect happiness. Even so bitter a satirist as Swift, 
 who for some time was Sir William Temple's secretary, 
 has nothing but praise to give this distinguished and 
 accomplished gentleman. When he died, in 1698, 
 Swift wrote in his diary, " With him died all that was 
 good and amiable among men." 
 
 Dorothy's letters to her suitor remain as fresh and 
 charming to all who read them now as they must 
 have been to the most enamoured of swains more 
 than three centuries ago. She did not read very 
 serious books, but she seems to have loved those 
 wearisome French romances, " The Grand Cyrus," of 
 Mademoiselle de Scud^ri, Calpren^de's " Cassandre," 
 and the rest of them, which are so unreadable to a 
 later generation. She sends these portly volumes to 
 her lover, and is constantly referring to the stories 
 contained in them. She writes short letters and 
 expects long ones in return, or else she laughs at her 
 lover's jealousy — jealousy which, by the way, he had 
 every right to entertain. Or, again, she seriously 
 rates him about his carelessness in matters of health. 
 She gives him all kinds of commissions to do for her 
 
 238 
 
Dorothy Osborne's Lovc^Lcttcrs 
 
 in town ; she tells him about the new fashion for seals, 
 and begs him to procure some for her. " I do remem- 
 ber you once sealed a letter to me with as fine a one 
 as I have seen. It was a Neptune, I think, riding 
 upon a dolphin, but I'm afraid it was not yours, for I 
 saw it no more. Any old Roman * head ' is a present 
 for a prince. If such things come in your way, pray 
 remember me." Or, once more, she will describe how 
 in fear of suffering from the spleen she is forced to 
 take steel, " though I am partly of your opinion that 
 'tis an ill kind of physic. Yet I am confident I take 
 it the safest way, for I do not take the powder, as 
 many do, but only lay a piece of steel in white wine, 
 overnight, and drink the infusion next morning, which 
 one would think were nothing, and yet 'tis not to be 
 imagined how sick it makes me for an hour or two, 
 and (which is the misery) all that time one must be 
 using some kind of exercise. Your fellow-servant has 
 a blessed time on't. I make her play at shuttlecock 
 with me, and she is the veriest bungler at it that ever 
 you saw. Then am I ready to beat her with the 
 battledore, and grow so peevish as I grow sick, that 
 I'll undertake she wishes there were no steel in Eng- 
 land." So Dorothy prattles on — at one time about a 
 lock of hair which her lover gave her. " I never saw 
 finer hair, nor of a better colour. But cut no more 
 on't. I would not have it spoiled for the world. If 
 you love me, be careful of it." At another time she 
 will tell us quite gravely about faith-healing, and how 
 she visited Lilly, the famous astrologer, whom she 
 promptly declares to be an impostor. Yet she has 
 
 239 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 her own pretty little superstitions, too. " Ever since 
 this adventure, I have had so great a belief in all 
 things of this nature, that I could not forbear laying 
 a peasecod, with nine peas in't, under the door 
 yesterday, and was informed by it that my husband's 
 name should be Thomas. How do you like that ? " 
 Through it all, through the brief quarrels which ended 
 in a fuller reconciliation, and the real difficulties inter- 
 posed between her and the fulfilment of her hopes, 
 Dorothy betrays herself to be the truest-hearted 
 woman that ever deserved a loving husband. " I shall 
 not blush to tell you," she writes, " that you have 
 made the whole world besides so indifferent to me, 
 that, if I cannot be yours, they may dispose me how 
 they please. Henry Cromwell will be as acceptable 
 to me as anybody else. ... I declare that you have 
 still the same power in my heart that I gave you at 
 our last parting, that I will never marry any other, 
 and that if ever our fortunes will allow us to marry, 
 you shall dispose me as you please. . . . But from 
 this hour we'll live quietly — no more fears, no more 
 jealousies ; the wealth of the whole world, by the 
 grace of God, shall not tempt me to break my word 
 with you, nor the importunity of all the friends I 
 have." And the dream came true ; the conclusion 
 proved as happy as Dorothy Osborne knew it would 
 be, albeit that she did not dare to hope it. This is 
 what makes the story so rounded and complete. The 
 loves of Dorothy Osborne and William Temple, as re- 
 vealed in the exquisite fragrance of these letters, form 
 one of the most perfect romances which history records. 
 
 240 
 
§3 
 FANNY BURNEY 
 
 GENTLE READER— for in dealing with an old- 
 fashioned book one must adopt an antiquated 
 form of address — gentle reader, did you ever peruse 
 Fanny Burney's "Evelina"? Of course, you are 
 aware of the literary history of this novel. You 
 know that Burke sat up all night to finish it ; that 
 Johnson thought it in some respects superior to the 
 work of Fielding ; and that there were many clever 
 critics of the time who thought that the young lady 
 authoress had " vastly " improved upon Richardson. 
 But the question still remains, how many of the 
 modern generation have ever looked within its covers ? 
 Gentle reader, have you ? Do you know any one 
 who has ? It is one of the recognized products of 
 the eighteenth century, which we accept without 
 questioning its merits, and certainly without dis- 
 turbing our judgment by any nearer or more profound 
 acquaintance. And if this is so with "Evelina," it 
 is assuredly still more true of " Cecilia," of " Camilla," 
 and of "The Wanderer, or Female Difficulties," 
 which followed the first novel in due course of pro- 
 duction, and brought their lucky author many of 
 those golden sovereigns, or " yellow boys," to which 
 her friend Samuel Crisp on one occasion feelingly 
 
 241 R 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 alluded. But, whatever may be the case with her 
 novels, as a matter of fact Fanny Burney, or, as we 
 more often call her, Madame d'Arblay, has left for 
 our generation, in her " Diary and Correspondence," 
 something of lasting value — a bright, piquant, and 
 most interesting record of all that she had seen and 
 heard. It is a book for the bedside, and for 
 occasional hours of either relaxation or convalescence, 
 and in this respect is worthy of comparison with 
 Mrs. Delany, or even with Boswell's " Life of 
 Johnson." 
 
 There is really no reason why " Evelina " should 
 not be read by any of those who have the patience 
 to get through " Pamela " or " Clarissa Harlowe." 
 The story is not much, but the characterization is 
 a great deal. Evelina, who adopts the epistolary 
 style brought into general popularity by Samuel 
 Richardson, is a young lady having the misfortune 
 of being unacknowledged by her father, Sir John 
 Belmont, and of being patronized by her vulgar 
 grandmother, Mme. Duval. After living for some 
 time with the aristocratic relations of her father's 
 family, she has to put up with the terrible con- 
 nections on her mother's side, and only after many 
 perilous adventures does she at the last, in an affect- 
 ing scene, get the paternal blessing and marry a 
 blameless prig after the fashion of Sir Charles 
 Grandison. The merit of the story, the literary and 
 historical merit, depends not on the plot, but much 
 more upon those admirable sketches of character, 
 and those picturesque descriptions of more or less 
 
 242 
 
Fanny Burncy 
 
 riotous life at Vauxhall and Ranelagh, which give 
 us so curious an insight into the conditions of 
 existence in the eighteenth century. There are 
 two principal antagonists in the novel — an up- 
 roarious sea-captain, Captain Mirvan, who belongs 
 to the paternal branch of the family, and Madame 
 Duval, or " Madame Frog," as the sea-captain called 
 her, whom we know to be Evelina's grandparent 
 on the mother's side. Both are caricatures, at 
 least so it appears to a modern critic, but both 
 are carried through with such unfailing verve and 
 spirit that they remain in the memory. There are 
 a host of personages besides, all sketched with real 
 cleverness and insight — the Branghton family, Mr. 
 Lovel, Mr. Smith, to say nothing of Sir Clement 
 Willoughby and Lord Orville. And the heroine's 
 adventures at Vauxhall, together with Mme. Duval's 
 many well-merited misfortunes, are all traced with 
 such biting irony, as well as such genuine sense 
 of fun, that we cease to feel any wonder at the 
 nocturnal devotion of Burke, or the ponderous 
 admiration of Dr. Johnson himself. 
 
 Fanny Burney was not a beautiful woman at any 
 period of her life, whether in her maidenhood or 
 when she became Madame d'Arblay, but she enjoyed 
 great advantages, of which she was able to make 
 generous use. The daughter of Dr. Charles Burney, 
 a well-known organist and musician, she saw all 
 manner of distinguished people in her father's house. 
 Garrick went there ; the Russian Ambassador, Count 
 Orloff; Lord Sandwich, from the Admiralty; Lord 
 
 243 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 Barrington, from the War Office ; Lord Ashburn- 
 ham; and the French Ambassador, Monsieur de 
 Guignes, who was, as Macaulay remarks, " renowned 
 for his fine person and success in gallantry." But 
 of all those whom a kind fortune enabled her to 
 meet and associate with, there was no one, after her 
 father, who helped her more than her old friend 
 Samuel Crisp, " Daddy " Crisp, as she calls him, to 
 whom she writes so many letters in her published 
 correspondence. Every one was telling Fanny 
 Burney, after her success with " Evelina," that she 
 ought to write for the stage. Sheridan thought so, 
 so did Garrick ; but " Daddy " Crisp, perhaps owing 
 to his own somewhat melancholy experience, re- 
 frained from encouragement, and was indeed some- 
 what cold and distant concerning these dramatic 
 schemes of his little "Fannikin." She had been 
 accustomed to write at large ; to work out a situation 
 with all that plenitude of detail which is possible 
 for the novelist. Clever as her conversations were, 
 they were always diffuse ; she lacked the concentra- 
 tion and conciseness required of the writer for the 
 stage. She is forced to try her hand, of course. 
 That is the penalty demanded of her through the 
 adulation of her friends. But her tragedy of " Edwy 
 and Elgiva," brought out at Drury Lane with Mrs. 
 Siddons as the heroine, was anything but a success, 
 and her comedy was never written, or else has not 
 come down to us. 
 
 Nor yet was her literary genius capable of much 
 expansion. "Cecilia," it is true, which was her 
 
 244 
 
Fanny Burney 
 
 second novel, gives us a more ambitious scheme than 
 " Evelina," and testifies to a certain development 
 of her power; but it was by no means so bright, 
 so sparklingly youthful and clever, as her first 
 venture. Then came a steady decline, due possibly 
 to the circumstances of her life, or else to the dis- 
 covery that the fount of her inspiration was, after 
 all, only a modest spring. Macaulay waxes indig- 
 nantly eloquent over the fact that Fanny Burney 
 became second Keeper of the Robes to the Queen, 
 and buried her talents in a series of courtly and un- 
 interesting duties. But he seems to imagine that 
 she made a great deal of money by her books, and, 
 so far as the two earlier ones are concerned, that 
 is more than doubtful. Her third novel, " Camilla," 
 brought her in something like ^3000. It was pub- 
 lished by subscription, and eagerly bought by those 
 who expected great things from the authoress of 
 " Evelina " and " Cecilia." But it was a poor piece 
 of work, and only a little better than her fourth 
 novel, "The Wanderer, or Female Difficulties," a 
 most tedious and unreadable tale in five volumes. 
 
 The worst of it is that Fanny Burney's literary 
 style showed also a progressive deterioration. All 
 the bright and sharp outlines of her earlier work 
 disappeared, and gave place to a certain ponderous 
 verbiage, which has been attributed to the influence 
 of Dr. Johnson. Macaulay, at the end of his 
 celebrated essay, quotes amusing instances of these 
 changes of style. Simplicity had vanished from her 
 pen ; she became frigid and tortuous and complex, 
 
 245 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 writing sentences the merit of which was as doubtful 
 as their sense was obscure. Poorest of all was the 
 volume which, as a labour of love, she consecrated 
 to the memory of her father, the " Memoirs of Dr. 
 Charles Burney." On the other hand, her Diary 
 and Letters are completely delightful from end to 
 end. The studies of character, the little pictures she 
 portrays, the incidents, sometimes serious, more often 
 laughable, of her existence at Court, the valuable 
 glimpses she affords of King George III. and of the 
 Queen, the episodes relating to Mrs. Thrale and Dr. 
 Johnson, and Mrs. Schwellenberg, the vignettes of 
 Mrs. Delany and the bas-bleus of the period, are quite 
 inimitable in their freshness and originality. It is 
 probably quite useless to recommend the present 
 generation to read "Evelina,'* but the "Diary and 
 Correspondence of Fanny Burney, Madame d'Arblay,'* 
 will always remain one of the possessions, and, in- 
 deed, in some respects one of the glories, of the age 
 which intervened between the death of Richardson 
 and Fielding and the rise of Walter Scott. And, 
 without Fanny Burney, there might never have been 
 Jane Austen, who has recorded her admiration of 
 her predecessor in " Northanger Abbey." 
 
 246 
 
§4 
 MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE 
 
 NO age was richer in memoirs and correspondence 
 of all kinds than the eighteenth century in 
 France. Most famous of these are, I suppose, the 
 Memoirs of the Due de St. Simon, containing a 
 series of pictures of the Court of Louis XIV. and the 
 Regency, remarkable, above all, for the bitterness of 
 their tone. Then we have the Memoirs of Madame 
 d'Epinay, and those of Mdlle. Aissd, and the extra- 
 ordinary Confessions and Reveries of Rousseau. 
 But amongst them all, the " Letters of Mdlle. de 
 Lespinasse" hold a conspicuous place, belonging, 
 indeed, to a category of writings of which not many 
 examples exist in all literature. Who, in point of 
 fact, are the great lovers who have dared to betray to 
 the world the passionate anguish of their souls ? 
 Antiquity gives us Sappho, fragments of whose 
 poems, full of fire and tears, come down to us across 
 the ages. Or we think of the "Phaedra" of Euripides, 
 with its modern equivalent, the " Ph^dre " of Racine, 
 or the beautiful stormy episode of Dido in Virgil, the 
 " Medea " of Apollonius of Rhodes, the " Ariadne " 
 of Catullus. In the modern world we have examples, 
 which do not altogether bear comparison with earlier 
 
 247 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 prototypes, in the Letters of Heloise or those of the 
 Portuguese Nun, or " Manon Lescaut," or the Sonnets 
 of Mrs. Browning. The Letters of Mdile. de Lespi- 
 nasse yield to none of these in fervour or intensity. 
 It was a period when Rousseau was setting the 
 example of the most intimate analysis, as well as the 
 most shameless confessions, of a human personality. 
 Yet we catch in all that he wrote the accent of a 
 studied affectation, while Mdlle. de Lespinasse is 
 absolutely unaffected. To translate her letters into 
 English is a most difficult, and, in some respects, 
 impossible task ; but the edition, for which Katherine 
 Prescott Wormeley has made herself responsible, 
 gives a fairly adequate idea of the inimitable and 
 almost unparalleled original. 
 
 The story of this most amorous lady, whose 
 capacity for love is an absolute stroke of genius, is 
 tolerably well known. She was an illegitimate child, 
 the natural daughter of the Comtesse d'Albon, 
 whose legitimate daughter had married the brother 
 of the Marquise du Deffand. At the age of twenty, 
 Julie-Jeanne EMonore, for such was the only name 
 to which she was entitled, was nothing more nor 
 less than a governess in the house of the man who 
 had married her sister. It was there that Madame 
 du Deffand found her, and, captivated by the charm 
 of her frank, unspoiled nature, and her ready 
 social wit, took her away to live with herself as 
 her companion and reader at the Convent of St. 
 Joseph. The alliance did not last long — perhaps it 
 was impossible that it should. Madame du Deffand 
 
 248 
 
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse 
 
 was growing old, and the young, brilliant girl soon 
 attracted to herself the admiration of those notable 
 men, D'Alembert, Turgot, and others, who assembled 
 to enjoy their sallies of wit and their sprightly con- 
 versation at the Convent of St. Joseph. Then came 
 a fatal discovery. Madame du Deffand, who rose 
 late, and who was rarely visible before six in 
 the evening, found one day that her young com- 
 panion was receiving in her private room, a good 
 hour earlier, most of her own habitual visitors. There 
 were outcries and lamentations, charges of robbery, 
 stormy vindications of cherished rights, ended by a 
 complete and absolute rupture. Mdlle. de Lespinasse 
 established a salon of her own in the Rue de 
 Bellechasse, and there she queened it over French 
 society for many years. She was in no sense beauti- 
 ful, but she possessed both grace and charm ; above 
 all, she knew how to make people at home, to extract 
 from them by a sort of judicious flattery the best 
 they could communicate, their wittiest thoughts, 
 their most sparkling utterances. She tells us herself 
 in her letters the secret of her success. " The truth 
 is," she says, " that I had a real triumph because I 
 brought out the charms and the intellects of the 
 persons to whom I was talking." She was, in fact, 
 an admirable listener, and the reality of her sympathy 
 proved, as it always does, the strongest cement of a 
 sociable and enthusiastic friendship. Moreover, she 
 never required praise from her worshippers. What 
 she desired was something infinitely more subtle and 
 dangerous — love. 
 
 249 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 Love she had, in truth, offered her with both 
 hands. There was D'Alembert, to begin with, one 
 of the recognized powers of the eighteenth century, 
 the perpetual Secretary of the French Academy, 
 who, almost without knowing it, laid his heart at 
 Mdlle. de Lespinasse's feet. Poor D'Alembert ! It 
 is impossible not to feel sorry for so staunch an ally. 
 For years and years he was her steady friend and 
 benefactor, and he thought, good, easy man, that she 
 was as much devoted to him as he was to her. Only 
 after her death did he discover the truth, which did 
 not prevent him from offering to her departed spirit 
 the tribute of his affectionate and tearful eulogies. 
 But the lady's heart had always been elsewhere — 
 first in the keeping of a M. de Mora, next offered to 
 and accepted with tempered enthusiasm by the 
 Comte de Guibert. The Marquis de Mora was a 
 remarkable man, the Ambassador from Spain to the 
 Court of France, who came to Paris about the year 
 1766. He had to be absent on various occasions, 
 but he always returned to Mdlle. de Lespinasse. 
 During a journey which he made to Fontainebleau in 
 the autumn of 177 1, he wrote as many as twenty -two 
 letters to her in ten days of absence. Unfortunately, 
 he had feeble health, and died at Bordeaux in 1774. 
 Alas, for the constancy of human affections ! Even 
 before this date, Mdlle. de Lespinasse, in the month 
 of September, 1772, met the Comte de Guibert, 
 and promptly fell head over ears in love with him. 
 It seems almost a discourtesy to mention the not 
 unimportant fact that the lady was forty years of 
 
 250 
 
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse 
 
 age, while the young gentleman was just twenty-nine. 
 M. de Guibert, however, was by no means so dis- 
 tinguished a man as M. de Mora. He was brilliant 
 and facile, starting life with a great reputation, which 
 his subsequent career did not altogether sustain. 
 His contemporaries in their enthusiastic way described 
 him as "a soul which springs on all sides towards 
 fame." But he was more than a little superficial, 
 and although he enjoyed apparently the din and 
 tumult of love, and naturally felt proud of the 
 devotion of the established leader of Parisian society, 
 his emotions seem to have had neither warmth nor 
 duration. As a matter of fact, he married another 
 lady, and it perplexes us with a chill sense of dis- 
 appointment to find that the love-letters addressed 
 by Mdlle. de Lespinasse to M. de Guibert were 
 published to the world by his wife, assisted in the 
 work of editing by Barr^re, the notorious Barr^re of 
 the Terror. 
 
 Under whatever auspices they first saw the light, 
 these letters of Mdlle. de Lespinasse are in the front 
 rank of literature. They are exceedingly frank and 
 ingenuous. They are, if the expression may be 
 pardoned, quite abandoned and shameless in their 
 avowals, and one sometimes wonders whether it was 
 not a kind of impiety to issue them in print. For 
 Mdlle. de Lespinasse, at the dangerous age of forty 
 was torn by many conflicting emotions — remorse for 
 her speedy forgetfulness of M. de Mora, agonized 
 remembrance of his love and early death, a new 
 passion for M. de Guibert, an intimate consciousness 
 
 251 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 that she was giving her young lover a great deal 
 more than he could give her, a pathetic resignation 
 when she found that he intended to marry some one 
 else, a quite piteous resolve to retain at all events his 
 friendship by helping to establish his social fortunes. 
 At the time when the Spaniard, M. de Mora, knew 
 her, he was able to say that there was no one of his 
 own countrywomen who possessed such a wealth of 
 tender emotions. To us, reading these letters, the 
 words of which seem to burn the page on which they 
 are written, there is abundant proof that Mdlle. de 
 Lespinasse would bear comparison, not only with the 
 contemporary Spanish ladies, but with Sappho and 
 Phaedra, H^loise, and the Portuguese Nun. Take, 
 for instance, this exceedingly brief and pithy letter, 
 which she heads, "From every instant of my life, 
 1774. Mon ami, I suffer. I love you. I await you." 
 It is passion raised to its highest degree. Or this, 
 ** I feel only the need of being loved day by day. 
 Let us blot from our dictionary the words * for ever,' 
 my soul can no longer attain so far." Was ever so 
 ardent a love acknowledged with such an absolute 
 want of reserve ? 
 
 Happily in these letters we have lighter and 
 brighter passages, which, though never devoid of a 
 background of consuming passion, yet paint the 
 writer with something, at all events, of her acknow- 
 ledged charm. 
 
 " I dined to-day tete-^-tite with a person who is 
 unhappy, consequently there was interest. After- 
 wards, at three o'clock, I went to take a turn in the 
 
 252 
 
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse 
 
 Tuileries. Oh, how beautiful the gardens were! 
 How divine the weather ! the air I breathed se^-ved 
 to calm me ; I loved, I regretted, I desired, but all 
 those feelings bore the imprint of sweetness and 
 melancholy. Oh, mon ami, that way of feeling has 
 greater charm than the ardour and throes of passion 
 — yes, I think I am revolted by them. I will no 
 longer love forcibly ; I will love gently — but never 
 feebly. You can well believe that, since it is you 
 I love." 
 
 Here, again, is a pretty scene, describing the 
 reading of a love-letter under difficulties — 
 
 " First of all, I must tell you that your ink is 
 white as paper, and to-day it has really put me out 
 of patience. I had ordered your letter to be brought 
 to me at M. Turgot's, where I was dining with twenty 
 persons. It was given to me while at table ; on one 
 side I had the Archbishop of Aix, on the other, that 
 inquisitive Abbd Morellet. I opened my letter under 
 the table ; I could scarcely see that any black was 
 on the white, and the Abbe made the same remark. 
 Madame de Boufflers, who was on the other side of 
 the Archbishop of Aix, asked what I was reading. 
 * Remember where we are, and you will know what it 
 is.' * A memorial, no doubt, for M. Turgot ? * * Yes, 
 just so, madame, and I wish to read it over before I 
 give it to him.' Before returning to the salon, how- 
 ever, I had managed to read the letter through." 
 
 Fortunately, perhaps, we cannot all of us live at the 
 same exalted level of feeling as Mdlle. de Lespinasse, 
 for when love burns with this intensity it destroys its 
 
 253 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 victim. Her letters cannot be read and judged by 
 personal standards or ordinary social conventions. 
 They belong to a category all by themselves. But 
 her love killed her, and her last letters are a concen- 
 trated wail of anguish. On Thursday, May 23, 1776, 
 death relieved her of her sufferings. She had passed 
 the last three days in a state of exhaustion, which 
 scarcely permitted her to speak aloud. It is La 
 Harpe who tells us of the final scene. " The nurses 
 revived her with cordials, and raised her in her bed, 
 * Do I still live ? * she said regretfully. Those were 
 her last words." 
 
 254 
 
§ 5 
 
 THE JOURNAL OF COUNTESS 
 KRASINSKA 
 
 " /^NE week ago — it was Christmas Day — my 
 V-y honoured father ordered to be brought to him 
 a huge book, in which for many years he has written 
 with his own hand all the important things which 
 have happened in our country. ... I was much 
 pleased with his idea of recording interesting facts 
 and circumstances, and as I know how to write 
 pretty well in Polish and in French, and have heard 
 that in France some women have written their 
 memoirs, I thought, Why should not I try to do 
 something of the kind?" It is an ominous com- 
 mencement, but the reader may take heart of grace. 
 The Journal of the Countess Frangoise Krasinska 
 is by no means the confession of a " beautiful " soul, 
 such as the diary of Amiel, or the reckless avowals 
 of Marie Bashkistseff. She is not a nerve-driven, 
 disillusioned, passionate, pessimistic, decadent woman, 
 such as those with whom melancholy experience has 
 made us familiar, attempting to settle old-world 
 problems by the flickering light of their own carefully 
 cultivated emotions. No ; Frangoise Krasinska is 
 just a simple, innocent child, who would probably 
 
 255 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 have been much distressed if she had thought that 
 what she wrote in secret would be divulged a century 
 after her death — a wholly natural, tender-hearted, 
 somewhat unhappy being, who did not owe her 
 sufferings to a morbid self-consciousness, but to the 
 inevitable destiny of her life. She was worthy, like 
 Eugenie de Guerin, to be celebrated amongst the 
 most devoted of sisters and the rarest of women, 
 worthy even to be the heroine of George Meredith's 
 beautiful poem, " Love in the Valley." 
 
 ** Shy as the squurrel, and wayward as the swallow, 
 Swift as the swallows along the river's light." 
 
 That would not be an untrue image of the little girl 
 who dreamed that she was going to be Queen of 
 Poland, and only won the real devotion of her 
 husband when the star of his dynastic ambitions had 
 set for ever. 
 
 " The Journal of Countess Krasinska, great-grand- 
 mother of Victor Emmanuel." The diary begins on 
 New Year's Day, in the old Castle of Maleszow, 
 when the writer has just passed her sixteenth 
 birthday. She has an enormous belief in the 
 nobility of the Korwin Krasinski family, and is 
 devotedly attached, not only to those whom through- 
 out she calls her "honoured" parents, but to her 
 eldest sister Basia — a pet name for Barbara — and 
 to her two younger sisters, Kasia and Marynia. 
 Life in Maleszow Castle is a little stiff and stately, 
 more, perhaps, than a little dull. It is spent, 
 on the part of the young ladies of the family, in 
 severe formal exercises with the governess, and with 
 
 256 
 
The Journal of Countess Krasinska 
 
 the troubles of an elaborate coiffure, which seems 
 frequently to have lasted for two hours, being relieved 
 only by the licensed pleasantries of Matenko, or 
 Matthias, a sort of Court fool. Between Frangoise 
 Krasinska and Matenko existed, in point of fact, 
 something of the same friendship as that which 
 united Cordelia to the Fool in " King Lear." If no 
 one jelse is kind to Matenko, Fran^oise will give him 
 flowers from her own bouquet, and receive from him 
 in return all the warm-hearted sympathy, and, now 
 and again, the prescient advice of the older and more 
 experienced courtier. For Matenko is not unaware 
 that the fates have no pleasant lot in store for his 
 little playmate. The good things of this life are 
 going, so he seems to think, to pass her by, save 
 the best of all good things — the purity and sweetness 
 of an unspoiled and unselfish nature. 
 
 The first great event in Frangoise's life is the 
 marriage of her sister Basia ; the second is the re- 
 jection of an ineligible suitor, the Castellanic Kocha- 
 nowski. In each case we are told some curious 
 customs, full of the quaint symbolism of the Middle 
 Ages. Basia, the bride-elect, after her betrothal, is 
 given by her mother a skein of tangled silk to wind, 
 in order that her success might prove that she was 
 patient enough to meet the trials of married life. 
 The poor rejected swain who dared to aspire to the 
 hand of Mdlle. Frangoise has his answer conveyed 
 to him by a peculiar dish, served during the course 
 of dinner. "We waited awhile," says our heroine, 
 " for the roast, and when they brought it in I saw 
 
 257 S 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 my Castellanic changing his colour and growing pale. 
 I looked at the dishes. I saw a goose with black 
 gravy, and then I guessed all." For the goose with 
 black gravy conveyed a polite but positive informa- 
 tion that the proposal of marriage was not accepted, 
 and the suitor was sent disconsolately away. The 
 fact was that, quite apart from her parents' wishes, 
 Frangoise Krasinska had a little timorous dream of 
 her own concerning Charles Duke of Courland, who, 
 in rivalry with Stanislaus Poniatowski, was a candi- 
 date for the throne of Augustus III. of Poland. 
 When Basia is married, Frangoise wonders when her 
 turn will come. " In any case," she writes, " I have 
 not the slightest desire to be married yet; I am 
 happy as I am. Marriage puts an end to all ex- 
 pectations ; a married woman knows who she is, and 
 who she shall be until her death, and I like so much 
 to dream." If she had known all, she would have 
 been glad to put off the fatal day as long as possible, 
 to live quietly with her " honoured " parents, and let 
 who will feed themselves on airy and fantastic hopes. 
 
 In time she leaves her beloved Castle of Maleszovv 
 and goes to Warsaw, first to school, then to the house 
 of her relative, the Princess Woivodine. She is going 
 to see the Duke of Courland. On January i, 1760, 
 just one year after her diary commenced, she gains 
 her desire. 
 
 " My wishes have been fulfilled, how much ful- 
 filled ! Not only have I seen the Duke, but I have 
 talked with him. I not only talked with him, but 
 . . . but will it not be too bold to write down that 
 
 258 
 
The Journal of Countess Krasinska 
 
 which I would not dare to whisper to anybody, what 
 I do not dare to believe myself, what, perhaps, I only 
 dreamed of? Well! no, I did not dream, I am sure 
 of that ; I always know very well when I please any 
 one. And then is there anything extraordinary, 
 since God has made me handsome, and everybody 
 acknowledges it, that the Duke looked at me with 
 the same eyes as other people ? The same eyes ? 
 Was there not in his eyes something more than in 
 others ? ... I do not know at all how I bowed, 
 but I fear it was not that special courtesy which the 
 dancing-master taught me, neither do I know what 
 the Duke said to me. I only remember that he 
 opened the ball with the Princess, and danced the 
 second Polonaise with me. Then when he talked, to 
 my great surprise, I answered without any embar- 
 rassment. . . . Can it be only sham, courtly civility ? 
 It's a pity I cannot ask anybody about it, but I am 
 afraid of the Princess, and I cannot ask the Prince 
 Woivode. I feel too much left to myself. One week 
 ago I was a schoolgirl amongst books and teachers, 
 and to-day I am playing a part in a world of which I 
 know nothing. . . . When shall I see the Duke again ? 
 Will he recognize me in my everyday dress ? " 
 
 Poor child ! If she had known the things which 
 belonged to her peace she would never have met the 
 Duke again, and only have been too glad to be 
 unrecognized in her ordinary attire. The Duke 
 learned to love her, of course, for most people did 
 that, and had no scruple in telling her so ; but he 
 belonged to the fickle, impressionable, irresponsible 
 
 259 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 order of male beings, and, being in rank above 
 her, was very much in the hands of Ministers of 
 State. He solemnly pledges himself to her before 
 witnesses, but the marriage is not like that of her 
 sister Basia, with congratulations and presents from 
 her friends, and blessings from father and mother. It 
 is a secret, hurried, miserable betrothal, at five o'clock 
 in the morning, done by stealth, with all the con- 
 sciousness of some act of terribly rash imprudence 
 for which there will be atonement hereafter. 
 
 " It was quite dark, the wind blew fiercely. We 
 walked to the church, as a carriage would have made 
 a noise. It was not far, but I should have fallen 
 several times if the Duke had not supported me. 
 The church was dark and silent as the grave. At a 
 side altar two candles were lighted, no living soul but 
 the priest and the sacristan. Our steps resounded 
 on the flagstones, as in a cavern. The ceremony did 
 not last ten minutes, and then we hastened away as 
 if pursued. ... I had my everyday dress on, not 
 even white, only I hastily put a bit of rosemary in 
 my hair. Yesterday, remembering Basia's wedding, 
 I prepared for myself with tears a golden coin, a 
 piece of bread, and a lump of sugar, but in my haste 
 I forgot to take them this morning. Now I am 
 again in my room alone, nobody is blessing or con- 
 gratulating me. The whole house is asleep, and if it 
 were not for the wedding-ring, which I shall soon 
 have to take off" and hide, I could not have believed 
 that I have returned from my wedding, that I am a 
 married woman, that I am his for ever." 
 
 260 
 
The Journal of Countess Krasinska 
 
 For reasons of State the marriage had to be kept 
 secret, and Frangoise was still generally known as 
 Mdlle. La Comtesse Krasinska. But as the mystery- 
 gets gradually divulged, wrath and persecution fall 
 upon the unhappy girl. Berch, the Minister of the 
 King, comes to see her in order to persuade her that 
 the wedding was a mere joke, and that it could be 
 annulled without any difficulty. This project, how- 
 ever, the eighteen-year-old girl-bride firmly declines 
 to entertain. Bribes are offered to her and refused. 
 So far as she is concerned, she will never consent to a 
 divorce. Her diary is henceforth neglected. Sorrow 
 took away all wish to write a single word about herself. 
 More than once she was threatened with annulment 
 of marriage. Her husband was notoriously incon- 
 stant; her parents, who never quite got over the mis- 
 take that Frangoise had made, died early, and the 
 homeless wife led a wandering life for several years. 
 It was not till the failure of all his hopes, and the 
 election of his rival, Stanislaus Poniatowski, to the 
 throne of Poland, that the Duke Charles returned to 
 his first love, and some tardy gleams of happiness 
 shone upon their home in Saxony. By her daughter, 
 Marie Christine, Frangoise Krasinska became great- 
 grandmother of Victor Emmanuel and the ancestress 
 of the Royal House of Italy. But it is not by this 
 august destiny that she will be remembered. It is 
 rather by the sweet picture which she unconsciously 
 draws of her own innocent and unfortunate life. It 
 is wrong to compare her with Eugenie de Guerin, 
 except on the ground of her emotional sensibility 
 
 261 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 and her capacity for devotion. She has no modern 
 malady in her, no wilful impatience, no nervous 
 inquietude, no trace of ennui. Her diary begins with 
 the bright confidences of a child ; it ends with the 
 disappointment of a bride. And the whole period 
 both of sunshine and gloom is only two years. 
 
 262 
 
§ 6 
 
 THE LOVE-LETTERS OF MARGARET 
 FULLER 
 
 MARGARET FULLER'S name is now one 
 to conjure with," says Julia Ward Howe in 
 her introduction to " The Love-Letters of Margaret 
 Fuller." That may possibly be true for an American 
 public, for whom this volume was apparently written ; 
 but it may be doubted whether her name carries 
 much significance for English readers. Yet she was 
 one of the first of those who concentrated her efforts 
 on the enlargement of the domain of womankind. 
 She was an exceedingly learned lady, and came of 
 an English Puritan stock ; she cultivated friendships 
 with distinguished and remarkable men like Ralph 
 Waldo Emerson, Carlyle, Hawthorne, Mazzini, 
 William Henry Channing, Horace Greeley, and 
 others ; and she was certainly a leader in the ranks 
 of those Transcendentalists who had so brief and so 
 interesting a history in America. She was, probably, 
 the last woman in the world who might have been 
 suspected of writing love-letters ; but that only makes 
 the present book the more curious. It is true that 
 she married an Italian nobleman, Giovanni Angelo 
 Ossoli, and perished, like a genuine heroine of 
 
 263 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 romance, in a shipwreck. But in herself she was 
 not what might be called either an expansive or a 
 sympathetic nature ; her learning was rather over- 
 powering and apt to be overpoweringly expressed, 
 and she was, for the most part, a pedant. Perhaps 
 the best known thing about her on this side of the 
 Atlantic is the comment made by Carlyle on one of 
 her extravagant utterances. " I accept the universe," 
 said Margaret Fuller. " Gad, she'd better," was the 
 reflection of Carlyle. Or again, on her remarking 
 that women were quite possible " sea-captains," she 
 was met by the question whether she could " com- 
 mand a smack." Carlyle appreciated her in a 
 fashion. 
 
 Nevertheless, this somewhat dry and priggish 
 lady obviously had her tender and feminine moments. 
 She formed a sentimental friendship with a certain 
 Jewish gentleman, called James Nathan, which lasted 
 from 1844 to 1846. Margaret Fuller was then a 
 young woman, living an intensely subjective life, 
 and writing for Horace Greeley's organ, the 
 Tribune. She had had no large experience of the 
 world, which came to her later, during her travels in 
 England and on the Continent. I should imagine, 
 from the letters themselves, that, although the man 
 was first intensely interested in his extremely close 
 acquaintanceship with this gifted woman, in the end 
 she somewhat bored him — quite as much as Mdlle. 
 de L'Espinasse in her letters bored her vehemently 
 pursued, but occasionally lukewarm, lover. At all 
 events, Mr. Nathan went off on his travels, and 
 
 264 
 
The Love^Letters of Margaret Fuller 
 
 Margaret Fuller crossed the Atlantic to England, 
 and the romance came to such a prosaic close as 
 these sentimental relationships have a trick of doing. 
 There is an odd entry in the diary which Margaret 
 Fuller wrote during her sojourn in England : 
 "Affections and ideal hopes are unproductive," she 
 writes. " I care not. I am resolved to take such 
 disappointments more lightly than I have. I ought 
 not to regret having thought other of ' humans ' 
 than they deserved." But Mr. Nathan, although 
 his ardour seems to have cooled, kept the letters, 
 and at a time when no one could be injured by their 
 publication, allowed them to be issued. Margaret 
 Fuller, meanwhile, went on her way, developed her 
 mind and intelligence by Continental travel, fell in 
 love with Rome, and married her Italian Count. 
 Then, after a close intimacy with Mazzini, she, her 
 husband, and child embarked at Leghorn for New 
 York in May, 1850. The barque was wrecked on 
 July 15 off the south coast of Long Island, and the 
 little family was drowned. It was a tragic end to 
 a curious life — a life which exhibited the gradual 
 growth of a richly endowed but narrow mind from 
 mere intellectualism into something much broader 
 and more humane. 
 
 Na one, perhaps, is in a position to understand 
 her without some previous knowledge of Alcott, 
 " The Dial," Emerson, and the Transcendental 
 movement. The oddly associated bodies at Brook 
 Farm and Fruitlands, which temporarily united in a 
 sort of communistic intimacy ardent youths of both 
 
 265 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 sexes, men with long hair and women with short, 
 dreamers, prophets, philosophers, novelists like Hav/- 
 thorne and thinkers like Emerson, had few other 
 connecting-links than an entire unconventionality 
 of manner and a whole-hearted dislike of utilitarian 
 and materialistic doctrines. They believed in the 
 spirit, the soul, the imagination, the constructive 
 reason ; they hated the ordinary commercialism, the 
 commonplace vulgarity of worldly life, the insistent 
 claims of matter and flesh. Yet with all their fine 
 devotion to Plato and Berkeley and Swedenborg, 
 they were, with just two exceptions, merely fantastic, 
 artificial, parochial people. Hawthorne laughed at 
 them with charming and self-conscious humour in 
 his " Blythesdale Romance " ; Emerson, with all his 
 gentle tolerance, protested against the imputation of 
 being their leader, and complained of being mis- 
 understood. With regard to the rest — Dr. Hedge, 
 Dr. Ripley, Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, 
 Theodore Parker, Henry Thoreau, and the great 
 Pythoness, Margaret Fuller herself—all we can lay 
 stress on is their strenuous courage, together with 
 such limitations as ignorance of the world, inex- 
 perience, fantastic zeal, love of the bizarre and the 
 artificial, and general superficiality inevitably impose. 
 Matthew Arnold, we may be sure, would never have 
 called them " of the centre " ; they lived in an 
 intellectual and social suburbia. Emerson was 
 a sweet-natured idealist, but he was also a broad, 
 tolerant man, full of reasonableness and sanity. He 
 tried to be a vegetarian, but he gave it up when he 
 
 266 
 
The Love^Letters of Margaret Fuller 
 
 found that it did not suit him. He thought for a 
 time, like Tolstoi, that the scholar should indulge in 
 hard manual labour, but subsequently discovered 
 that work in the fields did not conduce to good 
 work in the study. A well-intentioned effort to 
 preach the equality of men by asking his servants to 
 sit at table with the family was defeated by the 
 sturdy common-sense of two domestics, who pointed 
 out the obvious discomforts on both sides. After 
 all, what is the real aim of the idealist's life ? To 
 secure intellectual independence, to gain freedom, to 
 obtain room to grow ; and such objects can be 
 attained without any excessive departure from the 
 ordinary conventional existence. Emerson had a 
 great deal more spiritual liberty than the people 
 who tried to cover their intellectual poverty by 
 running a tilt against familiar, mundane habits. 
 Fortunately for the rest of us, thought is not depen- 
 dent on long hair or short hair, effeminacy in men, or 
 masculinity in women. 
 
 Margaret Fuller, during the early days of her 
 academic novitiate, must have been rather an un- 
 pleasant young woman. She was very learned, but 
 she was also dogmatic — an autocratic talker who 
 forced down all opposition. She was intensely vain, 
 intolerant, and, it would appear, more than a little 
 unsympathetic. She evidently required a good deal 
 of knowing. The first impressions of her were much 
 to her disadvantage. Listen to what Emerson, who 
 afterwards recognized her real worth, has to say of 
 her when she was twenty-six years of age : " Her 
 
 267 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 appearance had nothing prepossessing. Her extreme 
 plainness — a trick of incessantly opening and shutting 
 her eyelids, the nasal tone of her voice — all repelled, 
 and I said to myself we shall never get far. It is 
 to be said that Margaret made a disagreeable first 
 impression on most persons, including those who 
 became afterwards her best friends, to such an 
 extreme that they did not wish to be in the same 
 room with her. This was partly the effect of her 
 manners, which expressed an overweening sense of 
 power and slight esteem for others, and partly the 
 prejudice of her fame. She had a dangerous repu- 
 tation for satire, in addition to her great scholarship. 
 The men thought she carried too many guns, and 
 the women did not like one who despised them." 
 But she had the knack of binding her friends, when 
 once made, to her heart with links of steel. There 
 can be no question of that, for it is testified to by 
 every competent observer. "She wore the circle 
 of her friends," says Emerson, "as a necklace of 
 diamonds about her neck. . . . The confidences 
 given her were their best, and she held to them." So, 
 too, says Horace Greeley. " Her magnetic sway over 
 these (her friends) was marvellous, unaccountable ; 
 women who had known her but a day revealed to 
 her the most jealously guarded secrets of their lives 
 seeking her sympathy and counsel thereunto, and 
 were themselves annoyed at having done so when 
 the magnetism of her presence was withdrawn. . . . 
 Nor were these revelations made by those only 
 of her own plane of life, but chambermaids and 
 
 268 
 
The Love^Letters of Margaret Fuller 
 
 seamstresses unburdened their souls to her, seeking 
 and receiving her counsel ; while children found her 
 a delightful playmate and a capital friend." An odd 
 mixture she clearly was of the priggish and the 
 humane, of the unsympathetic and the attractive 
 type. Most people found her wonderful, and no one 
 could exactly explain why. Actually she did little 
 more than write journalistic articles and deliver 
 brilHant lectures. But in herself she must have 
 had some of the elements of greatness. No doubt 
 she improved as the years went on. Perhaps one 
 reason why her personality is so difficult to conceive 
 is that the Margaret Fuller at Concord was a very 
 different woman from the Margaret Fuller in Italy. 
 Still, one is conscious of a note of exaggeration when 
 Horace Greeley talks of her as " the loftiest, bravest 
 soul that has yet irradiated the form of an American 
 woman." 
 
 It is not easy to say why her love-letters should 
 have been published, except as a pious mode of 
 atonement on the part of Mr. Nathan. She was 
 very much in love with him, it is true ; but the love 
 of a pedantic young woman does not necessarily 
 result in good love-letters. Love makes for humility 
 and self-dispraise, but listen to Margaret Fuller — 
 
 " The destiny of each human being is, no doubt, 
 great and peculiar, however obscure its rudiments to 
 our present sight, but there are also in every age 
 a few in whose lot the meaning of that age is con- 
 centrated. I feel that I am one of those persons in 
 my age and sex. I feel chosen among women. I 
 
 269 
 
The Feminine Note in Fiction 
 
 have deep mystic feelings in myself, and intimations 
 from elsewhere." 
 
 That is the worst of idealism — it drives one back 
 on one's own personality as the key to the universe, 
 and one is apt to overrate the importance of the 
 personal message. Yet let us not omit the truly 
 feminine side of this strange woman — 
 
 "Afterward I thought of you with that foolish 
 tenderness women must have towards men that really 
 confide in them. It makes us feel like mothers, and 
 we wish to guard you from harm and to bless you 
 with an intensity which, no doubt, would be very 
 tiresome to you, if we had force to express it It 
 seemed to me that when we should meet I should 
 express to you all these beautiful feelings, and that 
 you would give me a treasure more from your rich 
 heart. You know how we did meet. You seemed 
 dissatisfied." 
 
 That is beautifully put, with singular simplicity 
 and charm — not at all as Margaret Fuller generally 
 wrote. For she bends herself before the man and 
 puts off her arrogant intellectualism, while the little 
 pathetic touch at the close — the consciousness of the 
 man's dissatisfaction — is a faint warning of what is 
 to come. And here, too, is another delightful 
 passage ; delightful in its na'ivet^, its sense of 
 surprise, its unwonted submission — 
 
 " One trifle let me add. I don*t know that any 
 words from your mouth gave me more pleasure, a 
 strange kind of pleasure, than these, * You must be a 
 fool, little girl.' It seemed so whimsical that they 
 
 270 
 
The Love^Letters of Margaret Fuller 
 
 should be addressed to me, who was called on for 
 wisdom and dignity long before my leading-strings 
 were off, and so pleasant, too. Indeed, thou art my 
 dear brother, and must ever be good and loving as to 
 a little sister." 
 
 After reading words like these one begins to 
 wonder which was the fool — Margaret Fuller or 
 James Nathan. 
 
 271 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abnormal, artistic treatment of 
 
 the, XXX, 93, loi, no 
 Academic, true sense of the term, 
 
 xxix, 139 
 Action, slowness of, 9, 21, 31, 212 
 Agnosticism, 3, 7, 27 
 American, essential quality of the, 
 
 "5 
 
 American women, 118, I2I, 122, 
 
 126, 269 
 Aristotelianism of Abelard, 229 
 Atmosphere, sense of, 107, 202 
 Austen, Jane, vii, ix, xxvii, xxxi, 
 
 xxxii, 52, 246 
 Autobiographical character of femi- 
 nine fiction, xi, xiii, xxxv 
 
 Bashkirtseff, Marie, xv, xvii, xx, 
 
 25s 
 Biography, dramatized, 1 29, 133 
 Bronte, Charlotte, xi, xxvii, xxxii 
 
 Caine, Hall, xxix 
 Caird, Mona, xiv, xvi 
 Canvas, proper size of, x, xxvii, 
 XXX, xxxii, xxxv, 92, 95, 138, 
 20$, 212, 218 
 Carlyle and Margaret Fuller, 263, 
 
 264 
 Carlyle, Mrs., xx 
 
 Character drawing in Mrs. Ward, 
 II, 20, 26, 35, 40 
 in Mrs. Craigie, xxx, 46, 52, 56, 
 
 57,63 
 in Lucas Malet, 92, 95 
 in Mrs, Atherton, 125 
 
 Character drawing in Miss Wilkins, 
 215, 216 
 
 in Miss Bumey, 242 
 Cleverness a desolating gift, 51, 77 
 Coarseness in fiction, 165, 167, 171 
 Constructive power, growth of, in 
 Mrs. Craigie, 45, 50, 59 
 lack of, in Miss Robins, 1 81, 
 189, 190 
 Corelli, Marie, xxix 
 Creative power, requirements of, 
 165, 170 
 not a feminine gift, xxxii 
 Crisp, Samuel, 241, 244 
 Criticism, provisional nature of rules 
 
 of, no, 199 
 Cruelty, study of, 165, 169 
 Culture, Nemesis of, xxxi, 78, 82, 
 
 139 
 
 the novel of, xxviu, xxx 
 Cynicism, 53, 81, 119 
 
 D'Annunzio, Gabriele, 204 
 Decadents, 185 
 
 Deformity, moral effect of, III 
 Detail, excessive love for, x, xii, 
 
 xxxii, xxxv, II, 21, 57, 121, 
 
 189, 212 
 need for careful choice of, 222 
 Dickens, Charles, xii, 26 
 Didacticism in fiction, xiii, 11, 25, 
 
 3S» 63, 64, 76, 88, 95, 102, i8i 
 Disraeli and Mrs. Craigie, 56, 58, 
 
 63 
 
 Dostoievsky and Mrs. Voynich, 171 
 
 Dramatic power in George Eliot, xi 
 
 inMrs.Ward,i9,4i 
 
 273 
 
Index 
 
 Dramatic power weak in women 
 
 novelists, xxiii 
 Duncan, Sara Jeannette, xxxiv 
 Duse, Eleonora, xv, xviii, 204 
 
 Early success, penalty of, 137 
 
 Edgren-Leffler, Mme., xv, xviii 
 
 Egoism, 183, 270 
 
 Elsmerism, 3 
 
 Emerson, 106, 107, 170, 263, 265, 
 
 266, 267 
 Epigrammatic writing, 45, 49, 51, 
 
 69 
 Epistolary novels, xxxv 
 Ethics of marriage, 183, 186, 188, 
 
 232 
 
 Faith versus reason, 228 
 Feminine portraits, 33, 64, 112, 152 
 Fuller-Maitland, Mrs., xxxv 
 
 Gaskell, Mrs., xiv, xxvii, xxxii 
 Genre novels, ix, xxxiii, 92 
 George Egerton, xiv, xv, xx, xxvi 
 George Eliot, xi, xiv, xxvii, xxviii, 
 
 xxxii, 9, 18, 21, 26, 33, 51,96, 
 
 III 
 George Sand, xxxv 
 Ghost stories, dramatic nature of 
 
 good, 223 
 Gladstone and " Robert Elsmere," 3 
 Grand, Sarah, xxvi 
 Greeley, Horace, 263, 268 
 Grotesque, its place in Art, 96, lOI, 
 
 221 
 Guerin, Eugenie de, 256, 261 
 
 Half-castes, tragic characteristics 
 
 of, 127, 211 
 Hamilton, Alexander, 129 
 Hanover, true history of Princess of, 
 
 150 
 Hansson, Laura Marholm, xv 
 Hardy, Thomas, xxvi, 51 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 106, 204, 
 
 221, 222, 263, 266 
 Hichens, Robert, 224 
 
 High ideals in fiction, xxviii, 24, 35, 
 
 51. 76 
 Hope, Anthony, xiii, xiv, 12 
 Humour, masculine and feminine, 
 
 xxviii, 52 
 
 Ibsen, influence of, on women, xv, 
 
 xxii, 25 
 Impressionism in short stories, 200, 
 
 203 
 
 James, Henry, xxx, xxxiii, 128, 221 
 Johnson, Dr., 7, 241, 243, 245 
 Journalistic treatment of scenery, 
 122 
 
 Kingsley, Charles, 88, iii 
 
 Henry, ill 
 
 Mary, ill 
 Kipling, Rudyard, xxix, xxxi 
 Kovalevsky, Sonia, xv, xvii 
 
 Labour politics, 13, 14, 19 
 
 dignity of, 212 
 Love, the result of antagonism, 28, 
 
 33 
 its relation to religion, xxix, 29, 
 
 30,54,61 
 Its triumph over worldlmess, 67, 
 
 75 ... 
 
 Lovers, great, m antiquity, 247, 252 
 
 Lytton, Bulwer, 221 
 
 Macau lay's Essays, 234, 245 
 
 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 204 
 
 Male portraits by women, 92, 189, 
 
 193 
 Manners, Mrs. Craigie's pictures of, 
 
 66, 69 
 
 novel of, xxviii 
 Marcella and Romola, 18 
 Marriage customs in Poland, 257, 
 
 258, 260 
 Masculine spirit in women's novels, 
 
 xi, xii, xiv, 95, 189, 193, 194 
 Mazzini and Margaret Fuller, 265 
 Melodrama and romantic fiction, 
 
 56, 163 
 
 274 
 
Index 
 
 Memoirs, French, 247 
 Meredith, George, xii, xxviii, xxxi, 
 49>5i> S3. 65, 82, 134, 182,256 
 Merriman, H. Seton, 56 
 Metre, theories of, 149, 154 
 Mitford, Miss, xxxii 
 
 Neutrality, deficient in women's 
 
 novels, xii, xxviii, 182 
 Nietzsche, influence of, 183, 185 
 Nihilism, 173, 175 
 Novel, essential character of the, 
 
 181 
 
 Oliphant, Mrs., xiv, 106, 221 
 
 Ouida, xiv 
 
 Out-of-doors novels, xxxii 
 
 Pathological novels, xxxi, 171, 
 176 
 
 Personality, its importance in criti- 
 cism, 87 
 
 Pessimism, 163, 168, 169, 183, 255 
 
 Physical peculiarities, insistence on, 
 
 94 
 Poe, Edgar Allan, 221, 222 
 Poetic drama, 140, 149 
 Polish life, 256 
 
 Problem novels, origin of, xxvi 
 Provincial life in Mrs, Craigie, 79 
 Psychological analysis in Mrs. Ward, 
 
 9,33 
 
 m Mrs. Craigie, xxx, 
 
 52, 59. 64, 73. 80 
 its abstract nature, 
 
 . ^39 . ^ 
 Its necessity for great 
 art, 76 
 Psychological novel, the, xxxiii 
 
 Rationalism, mediaeval and mod- 
 ern, 227, 229 
 Realism, true meaning of, 143, 148 
 connection with idealism, 
 
 172 
 the novel of, xxviii, xxxi 
 Religious problems, 4, 5, 29, 30, 35, 
 54, 90, 194 
 
 Richardson and Miss Burney, xxxv, 
 
 241 
 Roman Catholicism, xxviii, 26, 31, 
 
 54, 60, 228 
 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 233, 247, 
 
 248 
 
 Saint, the temperament of a, 54, 
 
 60, 88, 95 
 Scandinavian genius, the, xv, xx 
 Scenery, descriptions of, 4, 9, 20, 
 
 26, 30, 32, 78, III, 209 
 Scepticism in women, 186 
 Scott, Sir Walter, xii 
 Sentimental novel, the, xxxv 
 Sequels, prejudice against, 12, 55, 
 
 59 
 Shakespeare and Mrs. Woods, 140 
 Short story, characteristics of, 20, 
 
 23, 119, 200 
 Skram Amalie, xv, xx 
 Socialism, 8, 10, 13, 14, 66, 69 
 Style, elaboration of, xxix, 53, 57, 
 
 59,77, 183,217 
 Suicide, ethics of, 185, 187 
 Superficiality in treatment, 71, 72 
 Supernatural, treatment of the, 90, 
 
 98, 102, 105, 218 
 Swift, Dean, 139, 143, 238 
 Symbolism, 89, 95, 102, 203 
 Sympathy, social power of, 249 
 
 Thackeray, ^ William Make- 
 peace, xii, xxviii, 23, 53, 76 
 
 Titles, Mrs. Craigie's choice of, 46, 
 52, 53f 70 
 
 Tolstoi, 171 
 
 Tragedy, true nature of, 25, 30, 138, 
 softening effect of, 34 
 
 Tragedies in humble life, xxxi, 23, 
 138, 147 
 
 Transcendentalists, the, 263, 265, 
 266 
 
 Victor Emmanuel, ancestress of, 
 
 256, 261 
 Village portraits, xxviii, xxxi, 21, 
 
 23, 26, 78, 138 
 
 275 
 
Index 
 
 Wharton, Mrs., xxxiii 
 Women, the chief readers of novels, 
 xii, xiv 
 dififerent types of, xvi, xix, xxi, 
 
 xxiv 
 education of, xvi, xxii, xxv 
 in politics, 15, 16, 19, 133 
 
 Women, psychology of, xix, xxi 
 their view of sufifering, 109, 165, 
 
 168 
 " wildness" of, xix 
 
 " Zack," xxxi, 138 
 
 Zola, Emile, xxix, 143, 167, 171 
 
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