Part 5

Fairy tales, and Harry and Lucy! But the real, old-fashioned, earnest, half-sombre fairy tales of our youth have slipped from the hands of children into those of folk-lore students, who are busy explaining all their flavor out of them; while as for Miss Edgeworth, the little people of to-day cannot be persuaded that she is not dull and prosy. Yet what keen pleasure have her stories given to generations of boys and girls, who in their time have grown to be clever men and women! Hear what Miss Thackeray, that loving student of children and of childish ways, has to record about them. “When I look back,” she writes, “upon my own youth, I seem to have lived in company with a delightful host of little play-mates, bright, busy children, whose cheerful presence remains more vividly in my mind than that of many of the real little boys and girls who used to appear and disappear disconnectedly, as children do in childhood, when friendship and companionship depend almost entirely upon the convenience of grown-up people. Now and again came little cousins or friends to share our games, but day by day, constant and unchanging, ever to be relied upon, smiled our most lovable and friendly companions: simple Susan, lame Jervas, the dear little merchants, Jem, the widow’s son, with his arms around old Lightfoot’s neck, the generous Ben, with his whip-cord and his useful proverb of ‘Waste not, want not,’--all of these were there in the window corner waiting our pleasure. After Parents’ Assistant, to which familiar words we attached no meaning whatever, came Popular Tales in big brown volumes off a shelf in the lumber-room of an apartment in an old house in Paris; and as we opened the books, lo! creation widened to our view. England, Ireland, America, Turkey, the mines of Golconda, the streets of Bagdad, thieves, travelers, governesses, natural philosophy, and fashionable life were all laid under contribution, and brought interest and adventure to our humdrum nursery corner.”[9]

And have these bright and varied pictures, “these immortal tales,” as Mr. Matthew Arnold termed them, lost their power to charm, that they are banished from our modern nursery corners; or is it because their didactic purpose is too thinly veiled, or--as I have sometimes fancied--because their authoress took so moderate a view of children’s functions and importance? If we place Miss Edgeworth’s and Miss Alcott’s stories side by side, we shall see that the contrast between them lies not so much in the expected dissimilarity of style and incident as in the utterly different standpoint from which their writers regard the aspirations and responsibilities of childhood. Take, for instance, Miss Edgeworth’s Rosamond and Miss Alcott’s Eight Cousins, both of them books purporting to show the gradual development of a little girl’s character under kindly and stimulating influences. Rosamond, who is said to be a portrait of Maria Edgeworth herself, is from first to last the undisputed heroine of the volume which bears her name. Laura may be much wiser, Godfrey far more clever; but neither of them usurps for a moment their sister’s place as the central figure of the narrative, round whom our interest clings. But when we come to consider her position in her own family, we find it strangely insignificant. The foolish, warm-hearted, impetuous little girl is of importance to the household only through the love they bear her. It is plain her opinions do not carry much weight, and she is never called on to act as an especial providence to any one. We do not behold her winning Godfrey away from his cigar, or Orlando from fast companions, or correcting anybody’s faults, in fact, except her own, which are numerous enough, and give her plenty of concern.

Now with Rose, the bright little heroine of Eight Cousins, and of its sequel A Rose in Bloom, everything is vastly different. She is of the utmost importance to all the grown-up people in the book, most of whom, it must be acknowledged, are extremely silly and incapable. Her aunts set the very highest value upon her society, and receive it with gratified rapture; while among her male cousins she is from the first like a missionary in the Feejees. It is she who cures them of their boyish vices, obtaining in return from their supine mothers “a vote of thanks, which made her feel as if she had done a service to her country.” At thirteen she discovers that “girls are made to take care of boys,” and with dauntless assurance sets about her self-appointed task. “You boys need somebody to look after you,” she modestly announces,--most of them are her seniors, by the way, and all have parents,--“so I’m going to do it; for girls are nice peacemakers, and know how to manage people.” Naturally, to a young person holding these advanced views of life, Miss Edgeworth’s limited field of action seems a very spiritless affair, and we find Rose expressing herself with characteristic energy on the subject of the purple jar, declaring that Rosamond’s mother was “regularly mean,” and that she “always wanted to shake that woman, though she was a model mamma”! As we read the audacious words, we half expect to see, rising from the mists of story-book land, the indignant ghost of little English Rosamond, burning to defend, with all her old impetuosity, the mother whom she so dearly loved. It is true, she had no sense of a “mission,” this commonplace but very amusing little girl. She never, like Rose, adopted a pauper infant, or made friends with a workhouse orphan; she never vetoed pretty frocks in favor of philanthropy, or announced that she would “have nothing to do with love until she could prove that she was something beside a housekeeper and a baby-tender.” In fact, she was probably taught that love and matrimony and babies were not proper subjects for discussion in the polite society for which she was so carefully reared. The hints that are given her now and then on such matters by no means encourage a free expression of any unconventional views. “It is particularly amiable in a woman to be ready to yield, and avoid disputing about trifles,” says Rosamond’s father, who plainly does not consider his child in the light of a beneficent genius; while, when she reaches her teens, she is described as being “just at that age when girls do not join in conversation, but when they sit modestly silent, and have leisure, if they have sense, to judge of what others say, and to form by choice, and not by chance, their opinions of what goes on in that great world into which they have not yet entered.”

And is it really only ninety years since this delicious sentence was penned in sober earnest, as representing an existing state of things! There is an antique, musty, long-secluded flavor about it, that would suggest a monograph copied from an Egyptian tomb with thirty centuries of dust upon its hoary head. Yet Rosamond, sitting “modestly silent” under the delusion that grown-up people are worth listening to, can talk fluently enough when occasion demands it, though at all times her strength lies rather in her heart than in her head. She represents that tranquil, unquestioning, unselfish family love, which Miss Edgeworth could describe so well because she felt it so sincerely. The girl who had three stepmothers and nineteen brothers and sisters, and managed to be fond of them all, should be good authority on the subject of domestic affections; and that warm, happy, loving atmosphere which charms us in her stories, and which brought tears to Sir Walter Scott’s eyes when he laid down Simple Susan, is only the reflection of the cheerful home life she steadfastly helped to brighten.

Her restrictions as a writer are perhaps most felt by those who admire her most. Her pet virtue--after prudence--is honesty; and yet how poor a sentiment it becomes under her treatment!--no virtue at all, in fact, but merely a policy working for its own gain. Take the long conversation between the little Italian merchants on the respective merits of integrity and sharpness in their childish traffic. Each disputant exhausts his wits in trying to prove the superior wisdom of his own course, but not once does the virtuous Francisco make use of the only argument which is of any real value,--I do not cheat because it is not right. There is more to be learned about honesty, real unselfish, unrequited honesty, in Charles Lamb’s little sketch of Barbara S---- than in all Miss Edgeworth has written on the subject in a dozen different tales.

“Taking up one’s cross does not at all mean having ovations at dinner parties, and being put over everybody else’s head,” says Ruskin, with visible impatience at the smooth and easy manner in which Miss Edgeworth persists in grinding the mills of the gods, and distributing poetical justice to each and every comer. It may be very nice to see the generous Laura, who gave away her half sovereign, extolled to the skies by a whole room full of company, “disturbed for the purpose,” while “poor dear little Rosamond”--he too has a weakness for this small blunderer--is left in the lurch, without either shoes or jar; but it is not real generosity that needs so much commendation, and it is not real life that can be depended on for giving it. Yet Ruskin admits that Harry and Lucy were his earliest friends, to the extent even of inspiring him with an ambitious desire to continue their history; and he cannot say too much in praise of an authoress “whose every page is so full and so delightful. I can read her over and over again, without ever tiring. No one brings you into the company of pleasanter or wiser people; no one tells you more truly how to do right.”[10]

He might have added that no one ever was more moderate in her exactions. The little people who brighten Miss Edgeworth’s pages are not expected, like the children in more recent books, to take upon their shoulders a load of grown-up duties and responsibilities. Life is simplified for them by an old-fashioned habit of trusting in the wisdom of their parents; and these parents, instead of being foolish and wrong-headed, so as to set off more strikingly the child’s sagacious energy, are apt to be very sensible and kind, and remarkably well able to take care of themselves and their families. This is the more refreshing because, after reading a few modern stories, either English or American, one is troubled with serious doubts as to the moral usefulness of adults; and we begin to feel that as we approach the age of Mentor it behooves us to find some wise young Telemachus who will consent to be our protector and our guide. There is no more charming writer for the young than Flora Shaw; yet Hector and Phyllis Browne, and even that group of merry Irish children in Castle Blair, are all convinced it is their duty to do some difficult or dangerous work in the interests of humanity, and all are afflicted with a premature consciousness of social evils.

“The time is out of joint; oh, cursed spite! That ever I was born to set it right!”

cries Hamlet wearily; but it is at thirty, and not at thirteen, that he makes this unpleasant discovery.

In religious stories, of which there are many hundreds published every year, these peculiar views are even more defined, presenting themselves often in the form of a spiritual contest between highly endowed, sensitive children and their narrow-minded parents and guardians, who, of course, are always in the wrong. The clever authoress of Thrown Together is by no means innocent of this unwholesome tone; but the chief offender, and one who has had a host of dismal imitators, is Susan Warner,--Miss Wetherell,--who plainly considered that virtue, especially in the young, was of no avail unless constantly undergoing persecution. Her supernaturally righteous little girls, who pin notes on their fathers’ dressing-tables, requesting them to become Christians, and who endure the most brutal treatment--at their parents’ hands--rather than sing songs on Sunday evening, are equaled only by her older heroines, who divide their time impartially between flirting and praying, between indiscriminate kisses and passionate searching for light. A Blackwood critic declares that there is more kissing done in The Old Helmet than in all of Sir Walter Scott’s novels put together, and utters an energetic protest against the penetrating glances, and earnest pressing of hands, and brotherly embraces, and the whole vulgar paraphernalia of pious flirtation, so immeasurably hurtful to the undisciplined fancy of the young. “They have good reason to expect,” he growls, “from these pictures of life, that if they are very good, and very pious, and very busy in doing grown-up work, when they reach the mature age of sixteen or so, some young gentleman who has been in love with them all along will declare himself at the very nick of time; and they may then look to find themselves, all the struggles of life over, reposing a weary head on his stalwart shoulder.... Mothers, never in great favor with novelists, are sinking deeper and deeper in their black books,--there is a positive jealousy of their influence; while the father in the religious tale, as opposed to the moral or sentimental, is commonly either a scamp or nowhere. The heroine has, so to say, to do her work single-handed.”

In some of these stories, moreover, the end justifies the means to an alarming extent. Girls who steal money from their relatives in order to go as missionaries among the Indians, and young women who pretend to sit up with the sick that they may slip off unattended to hear some inspired preacher in a barn, are not safe companions even in books; while, if no grave indiscretion be committed, the lesson of self-righteousness is taught on every page. Not very long ago I had the pleasure of reading a tale in which the youthful heroine considers it her mission in life to convert her grandparents; and while there is nothing to prevent an honest girl from desiring such a thing, the idea is not a happy one for a narrative, in view of certain homely old adages irresistibly associated with the notion. “Girls,” wrote Hannah More, “should be led to distrust their own judgment;” but if they have the conversion of their grandparents on their hands, how can they afford to be distrustful? Hannah More is unquestionably out of date, and so, we fear, is that English humorist who said, “If all the grown-up people in the world should suddenly fail, what a frightful thing would society become, reconstructed by boys!” Evidently he had in mind a land given over to toffy and foot-ball, but he was strangely mistaken in his notions. Perhaps the carnal little hero of Vice Versâ might have managed matters in this disgraceful fashion; but with Flora Shaw’s earnest children at the helm, society would be reconstructed on a more serious basis than it is already, and Heaven knows this is not a change of which we stand in need. In fact, if the young people who live and breathe around us are one third as capable, as strenuous, as clear-sighted, as independent, as patronizing, and as undeniably our superiors as their modern counterparts in literature, who can doubt that the eternal cause of progress would be furthered by the change? And is it, after all, mere pique which inclines us to Miss Edgeworth’s ordinary little boys and girls, who, standing half dazed on the threshold of life, stretch out their hands with childish confidence for help?

FOOTNOTES:

[8] _Literary Studies_, vol. ii.

[9] _A Book of Sibyls._

[10] _Ethics of the Dust._

THE DECAY OF SENTIMENT.

That useful little phrase, “the complexity of modern thought,” has been so hard worked of late years that it seems like a refinement of cruelty to add to its obligations. Begotten by the philosophers, born of the essayists, and put out to nurse among the novel-writers, it has since been apprenticed to the whole body of scribblers, and drudges away at every trade in literature. How, asks Vernon Lee, can we expect our fiction to be amusing, when a psychological and sympathetic interest has driven away the old hard-hearted spirit of comedy? How, asks Mr. Pater, can Sebastian Van Stork make up his mind to love and marry and work like ordinary mortals, when the many-sidedness of life has wrought in him a perplexed envy of those quiet occupants of the churchyard, “whose deceasing was so long since over”? How, asks George Eliot, can Mrs. Pullet weep with uncontrolled emotion over Mrs. Sutton’s dropsy, when it behooves her not to crush her sleeves or stain her bonnet-strings? The problem is repeated everywhere, either in mockery or deadly earnestness, according to the questioner’s disposition, and the old springs of simple sentiment are drying fast within us. It is heartless to laugh, it is foolish to cry, it is indiscreet to love, it is morbid to hate, and it is intolerant to espouse any cause with enthusiasm.

There was a time, and not so many years ago, when men and women found no great difficulty in making up their minds on ordinary matters, and their opinions, if erroneous, were at least succinct and definite. Nero was then a cruel tyrant, the Duke of Wellington a great soldier, Sir Walter Scott the first of novelists, and the French Revolution a villainous piece of business. Now we are equally enlightened and confused by the keen researches and shifting verdicts with which historians and critics seek to dispel this comfortable frame of darkness. Nero, perhaps, had the good of his subjects secretly at heart when he expressed that benevolent desire to dispatch them all at a blow, and Robespierre was but a practical philanthropist, carried, it may be, a little too far by the stimulating influences of the hour. “We have palliations of Tiberius, eulogies of Henry VIII., and devotional exercises to Cromwell,” observes Mr. Bagehot, in some perplexity as to where this state of things may find an ending; and he confesses that in the mean time his own original notions of right and wrong are growing sadly hazy and uncertain. Moreover, in proportion as the heavy villains of history assume a chastened and ascetic appearance, its heroes dwindle perceptibly into the commonplace, and its heroines are stripped of every alluring grace; while as for the living men who are controlling the destinies of nations, not even Macaulay’s ever useful schoolboy is too small and ignorant to refuse them homage. Yet we read of Scott, in the zenith of his fame, standing silent and abashed before the Duke of Wellington, unable, and perhaps unwilling, to shake off the awe that paralyzed his tongue. “The Duke possesses every one mighty quality of the mind in a higher degree than any other man either does or has ever done!” exclaimed Sir Walter to John Ballantyne, who, not being framed for hero-worship, failed to appreciate his friend’s extraordinary enthusiasm. While we smile at the sentiment,--knowing, of course, so much better ourselves,--we feel an envious admiration of the happy man who uttered it.

There is a curious little incident which Mrs. Lockhart used to relate, in after years, as a proof of her father’s emotional temperament, and of the reverence with which he regarded all that savored of past or present greatness. When the long-concealed Scottish regalia were finally brought to light, and exhibited to the public of Edinburgh, Scott, who had previously been one of the committee chosen to unlock the chest, took his daughter to see the royal jewels. She was then a girl of fifteen, and her nerves had been so wrought upon by all that she had heard on the subject that, when the lid was opened, she felt herself growing faint, and withdrew a little from the crowd. A light-minded young commissioner, to whom the occasion suggested no solemnity, took up the crown, and made a gesture as if to place it on the head of a lady standing near, when Sophia Scott heard her father exclaim passionately, in a voice “something between anger and despair,” “By G--, no!” The gentleman, much embarrassed, immediately replaced the diadem, and Sir Walter, turning aside, saw his daughter, deadly pale, leaning against the door, and led her at once into the open air. “He never spoke all the way home,” she added, “but every now and then I felt his arm tremble; and from that time I fancied he began to treat me more like a woman than a child. I thought he liked me better, too, than he had ever done before.”