Part 12

But her _motifs_ were now taken from history, not actual life. "La Comtesse de Boneval" is a really marvellous _tour de force_, being a development from a few actual letters written by a poor young wife, whose reluctant husband left her, after ten days, for foreign service, and never returned. Lady Georgiana makes clear the child's hero-worship, the brief gleam of gladness, the brave resolve not to interfere with duty and honour, and the dreary deserted condition. All is written in French, not only pure and grammatical, but giving in a wonderful manner the epigrammatic life and freshness of the old Parisian society. This is really the ablest, perhaps the most pathetic, of her books.

"Ann Sherwood" is a picture of the sufferings of the Romanists in Elizabethan times, "A Stormy Life" is the narrative of a companion of Margaret of Anjou--both showing too much of the author's bias. "Too Strange not to be True" is founded on a very curious story, disinterred by Lord Dover, purporting that the unhappy German wife of the ferociously insane son of Peter the Great, at the point of death from his brutality, was smuggled away by her servants, with the help of Countess Konigsmark, the mother of Marshal Saxe, while a false funeral took place. She was conveyed to the French Settlements in Louisiana, and there, after hearing that the Czarowitz was dead, she married a French gentleman, the Chevalier d'Auban. Here, in these days of one-volume tales, the story might well have ended, but Lady Georgiana pursues the history through the latter days of the princess, after she had returned to Europe and had been bereaved of her husband and her daughter. She lived at Brussels, and again met Marshal Saxe in her extreme old age. The figures of the Chevalier, and the sweet daughter, Mina, are very winning and graceful, and there are some most interesting descriptions of the Jesuit missions to the Red Indians; but, as a whole, the book had better have closed with the marriage with d'Auban.

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There is little more to say of Lady Georgiana's life. It was always affectionate, cheerful and unselfish, and it became increasingly devout as she grew older. After a long illness, she died at Bournemouth, on the 19th of January 1885, remembered fondly by many, and honoured by all who knew her saintly life. As to literary fame, she may be described as having written one first-rate book and a number fairly above the average.

MRS. STRETTON

About the same time as "Ellen Middleton" appeared, a novel was making its way rather by force of affectionate family portraiture than by plot or incident. "The Valley of a Hundred Fires" is really and truly Mrs. Stretton's picture of her father and mother, and her home; and her mother is altogether her heroine, while old family habits and anecdotes are given with only a few alterations. "The Valley of the Hundred Fires" has been placed by her on the borders of Wales, but it really was Gateshead, in Durham, quite as black and quite as grimy as the more southern region, inasmuch as no flowers would grow in the Rectory garden which, nevertheless, the children loved so heartily as to call it dear old Dingy. (It is Cinder Tip in the story.) Literally, they lived so as to show that

"Love's a flower that will not die For lack of leafy screen; And Christian hope may cheer the eye That ne'er saw vernal green;"

and that--at least, in the early days of this century--an abnormally large family was no misfortune to themselves or their parents.

The real name was Collinson, and the deep goodness and beneficence of the father, the Reverend John Collinson, and the undaunted cheerfulness, motherliness, and discipline of Emily, his wife, shine throughout, not at all idealised. The number of their children was fifteen, ten daughters and five sons; and the second daughter, Julia Cecilia, was, as she describes herself, a tall, lank, yellow baby who was born on the 25th of November 1812. She became as the eldest daughter to the others, for there had always been a promise that if there were several girls the eldest should be adopted by her aunt, wife to a clergyman and childless.

The two homes were a great contrast: the one kept in absolute order and great refinement, with music and flowers the constant delight and occupation, and the single adopted child trained up in all the precision of the household; while the other was a house of joyous freedom, kept under the needful restraints of sound religious principle, discipline and unselfishness. The story went that when the children were asked how many of them there were, they answered, "One young lady and eight little girls." Mrs. Collinson used to say, that if she ever saw any signs that her "one young lady" was either pining for companionship, or growing spoilt by the position, she would recall her at once; but the child was always happy and obedient, and pleased to impart her accomplishments to her sisters, who admired without jealousy. Comical adventures are recorded in the "Valley," such as when the whole train of little damsels, walking out under the convoy of Julia and a young nurserymaid, encountered a bull, which had lifted a gate on its horns. The maid thrust the baby into Julia's arms and ran away, while her charges retired into a ditch, the elder ones not much alarmed, because, as they said, the bull could not hurt them with the gate on its horns. It passed safely by them; but the little ones confessed to having been dreadfully frightened by a snail in the ditch, "which put out its horns like a little Kerry cow," and it creeped and it creeped!

One incident in their early childhood was the rioting that pervaded the collieries in the years immediately following the great French war. Mr. Collinson, being a magistrate, was called upon to accompany the dragoons in order to read the Riot Act. He thus left his family unprotected; but the seven thousand pitmen never touched the Rectory, and, according to the "Valley," replied courteously to two of the children, who rushed out to the top of the Cinder Tip, begging to know whether they had seen "our papa" and if he was safe.

There was another sadder episode, related also with much feeling, though a little altered, for it concerned the second son, not the eldest (then the only son) as described. A blow from a cricket ball did irreparable mischief to his knee, and it was suddenly decreed that amputation was necessary, long before the days of chloroform. The father was away from home, the mother sentenced not to be present, and the doctors consented that Julia should hold the patient's hand, smooth his hair, and try to tell him stories through the operation. It was successfully and bravely carried out, but the evil was not removed, and a few weeks later this much-loved boy was taken away. The circumstances, very beautiful and consoling, are given in the story; and there too is told how, before sunset on that sad day, the ninth little daughter was given, and struggled hard for the vigorous life she afterwards attained.

The "Parson's man" said one day, when his mistress, for once in her life, indulged in a sigh that her garden could never rival that of her sister, "We've got the finer flowers, ma'am."

Education was not the tyrannical care in those days that it is at present, and the young people obtained it partly through their parents, some at school, and some by the help of their grandmother and their aunt, but mostly by their own intelligence and exertions; and the family income was augmented by Mr. Collinson taking pupils. He had a fair private income; he had a curate, and was able to give a good education to his sons, one of whom made himself a name as Admiral Collinson, one of the Arctic explorers. If there were anxieties, they did not tell upon the children, whose memories reflect little save sunshine.

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At nineteen, Julia Collinson became the wife of Walter de Winton, Esquire, of Maedlwch Castle, Radnorshire; but after only twelve years was left a widow, with two sons and a daughter. Her life was devoted to making their home as bright and joyous as her own had been; and it was only in the loneliness that ensued on the children going to school that her authorship commenced, with a child's book called "The Lonely Island."

Later she wrote "The Valley of the Hundred Fires," tracing the habits, characters and the destiny of the family of Gateshead. The father was by this time dead, and extracts from his sermons and diary appear; but "Emily," the mother, is the real heroine of the whole narrative, and though there is so little plot that it hardly deserves the name of novel, there is a wonderful charm in the delineation. There are a few descriptions of manners and of dresses which are amusing; nor must we omit the portrait of the grandmother, Mrs. King (called Reine in the book), daughter to the governor of one of the colonies in America before the separation, with the manners of her former princess-ship and something of the despotism. She was a friend of Hannah More, a beneficent builder of schools, and produced a revolt by herself cutting the hair of all the scholars!

"The Queen of the County" relates Mrs. de Winton's experiences of elections among "the stormy hills of Wales" in the early days of the Reform Bill. "Margaret and her Bridesmaids" draws more upon invention. Each of two young girls, through the injudiciousness of her parents, has married the _wrong_ person. Margaret acquiesces too much in her husband's indolence, and when herself roused to the perception of duty tries in vain to recover lost ground. Her friend Lottie is a high-spirited little soul, determined to do her duty as a wife, but not to pretend the love she does not feel, till it has been won. She is rather provokingly and unnaturally perfect, especially as she is only seventeen, always knowing when to obey up to the letter in a manner which must so have "riled" her husband that his persistent love is hardly credible, though it shows itself in attempts to isolate her, so that she shall have no resource save himself. His endeavours bring upon him heart complaint, whereof he dies, under her tender care, though she never affects to be grief-stricken. Only, as Margaret has lost her husband about the same time in a yachting accident, Lottie refuses to listen to the addresses of a former lover of Margaret's until she is convinced both that her friend will never form another attachment and that the original passion she had inspired is absolutely dead. There is a good deal of character in the story, though overdrawn, and it has survived so as to call for a new edition.

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To her children, as well as to her many nephews and nieces, Mrs. de Winton was a charming companion-mother, always fresh, young, vigorous and as full of playfulness as the Julia who led the band of little sisters. When all her children were grown up, in 1858, she married Richard William Stretton, who had been their guardian and an intimate friend of the family, by whom he was much beloved. He died in 1868, and Mrs. Stretton followed him on the 17th of July 1878, leaving behind her one of the brightest of memories. Her books are emphatically herself in their liveliness, their tenderness, their fond enshrining of the past.

The third of our group had an even more eventless life, and, instead of letting her imagination dwell on her own past, she studied the women of past history, and realised what they must have felt and thought in the scenes where most of them figure only as names. Her father belonged to the higher professional class, and lived with his large family, of whom Anne was the eldest, at the Paragon, Chelsea, where at eight years old Anne listened to the crash of the carriages, when the Bourbons were on their return to France, and witnessed the ecstasy of London on the visit of the Allied Sovereigns after Waterloo.

With the help of masters for special accomplishments, the daughters had the best of educations, namely, the stimulating influence of their father, an accomplished man, for whom they practised their music, wrote their themes, went out star-gazing, and studied astronomy, listening with delight to his admirable reading of Scott or Shakspere; they also had the absolute freedom of an extensive library. Anne Manning was pronounced to be no genius, but a most diligent, industrious girl; as indeed was proved, for, becoming convinced during the brief reign of a good governess of the duty of solid reading, she voluntarily read from the age of fourteen ten pages a day of real, if dry, history, persevering year after year, and thus unconsciously laying in a good foundation for her future work.

For health's sake the family went into the country, where they became tenants of a tumble-down Cistercian priory on the borders of Salisbury Plain. The numerous girls, with their mother and governess, lived there constantly; the father coming down as often as his business would allow, almost always by the Saturday coach, to spend Sunday. Here the first literary venture was made, when Anne was about seventeen. It was a short dialogue on a serious subject, which a young aunt managed to get accepted in St. Paul's Churchyard; and, as Miss Manning candidly avows, was so well advertised privately by her fond grandfather that--such were the palmy days of authorship--five hundred copies brought her in a profit of L60.

The story, "Village Belles," was completed at Tenby, the Priory having become too ruinous for habitation. It was put into the hands of Baldwin and Cradock, and no proofs were sent till the whole of the two first volumes came together. It was introduced to Mr. Manning thus, "Papa, I don't know what you will say, but I have been writing a story."

"Ho! ho! ho!" was his first answer, but he afterwards said, "My dear, I like your story very much"--and never again referred to it.

Her own after judgment was that it was an "incurably young, inexperienced tale which, after all top dressing, remained but daisied meadow grass."

Sorrow came in to fill the minds of the family (to the exclusion of mere fictitious interests) in the deaths within short intervals of two of the sisters, and their mother's invalidism, ending, within a few years, in her death. After this the winters were spent by the three sisters at the Paragon, the summers in a cottage at Penshurst, their father coming down for the Sunday. Anne Manning, meantime, was pursuing studies in painting and was an excellent amateur artist. She was also a botanist, and this has much to do with her accuracy in writing details of country life and habits.

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Dates, alas! are wanting both in her own "Passages in the life of an Authoress," and in the recollections of her kind and affectionate biographer, Mrs. Batty; but it seems to have been in 1849 that her "Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell," at first written to amuse herself and her sisters, and afterwards sent to assist a brother in Australia, who was starting a local magazine, was given to the editor of "Sharpe's Magazine," then in its early youth.

It made her fame. Nobody had particularly thought of Milton in his domestic capacity before, except as having advocated divorce and made his daughters read Greek to him, and it was reserved for Miss Manning to make the wife paint her own portrait as the lively, eager girl, happy in country freedom with her brothers, important with her "housewife-skep" in her mother's absence, pleased with dress, but touched by the beautiful countenance and the sudden admiration of the strange visitor. There proves to be a debt which makes her marriage with him convenient to the father, and it is carried out in spite of the mother's strong objections, alike to the suitor's age, his politics, and his puritanism. We go along with the country girl in her disappointment and sense of dreariness in her unaccustomed London life, in the staid and serious household, where she sorely misses her brothers and is soon condemned for love of junketing. Then come her joy in her visit to her home at Forest Hill and her reluctance to return, fortified by her father's disapproval of Milton's opinions. By the time that a visit to some wise relatives has brought her to a better mind and to yearning after her husband, Milton has taken offence and has put forth his plea for divorce, which so angers her father that he will not hear of her return; nor does she go back till after many months and the surrender of Oxford, when on her own impulse she hurries to London, meets her husband unexpectedly, and when he "looks down on her with goodness and sweetness 'tis like the sun's gleams shining after rain."

There Mary Powell's journal ends. It is written in beautiful English, such as might well have been contemporary and could only have been acquired by familiarity with the writers of the period, flowing along without effort or pedantry so as to be a really successful imitation. It crept into separate publication anonymously, and achieved a great success, being in fact the first of many books imitating the like style of autobiography; nor has it ever been allowed to drop into oblivion. It was followed up after a time by "Deborah's Diary," being the record supposed to be kept by Milton's one faithful and dutiful daughter, who lived with him in his old age.

The "fascination of the old style," as she calls it, led her to deal with "The Household of Sir Thomas More" in the person of his noble daughter Margaret. There was a good deal more genuine material here, and she has woven in the fragments from Erasmus and others with great ingenuity, and imitated the style of the fifteenth century as well as she had done that of the seventeenth.

From that time Anne Manning's books had a ready sale, though still her name did not appear. "Cherry and Violet" was a tale of the plague of London; "Edward Osborne" told of the apprentice who leapt from the window of a house on London Bridge to save his master's daughter from drowning; "The Old Chelsea Bunhouse" described the haunts with which Miss Manning was familiar; and there were other stories of country life, such as the "Ladies of Bever Hollow." All were written in the purest style, such as could only be attained by one to whom slip-shod writing was impossible, and to whom it was equally impossible not to write what was gentle, charitable, and full of religious principle.

Miss Manning was a kind friend and charming letter-writer. Her health began to fail in 1854, when she was writing for a magazine "Some Passages in the Life of an Authoress," never completed. She continued to be an invalid under the care of her sisters till her death on the 14th of September, 1879.

[Signature: C M Yonge]

DINAH MULOCK (MRS. CRAIK)

_By_ MRS. PARR

DINAH MULOCK (MRS. CRAIK)

In the small circle of women writers who shed literary lustre on the early years of her present Majesty's reign was Dinah Mulock, best known to the present novel-reading generation as the author of "John Halifax, Gentleman."

To appreciate fully the position that we claim for her, it will be necessary to turn back to the period when she began to write, and see who were her contemporaries.

Pre-eminent among these stand out three names--names immortal on the roll of fame for so long as taste and critical judgment last; the books of Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot must be regarded as masterpieces of fiction. We, their humble followers, bow before their genius which time, fashion, or progress cannot dim or take from; therefore, to have achieved success and to have made an abiding fame while such luminaries were shining in the firmament was a distinction to be justly proud of--the result of talent, delicacy of handling, and grasp of character that were only a little below genius.

How vast the difference that one small step would have made it is not our purpose to show; our intention is rather to take a general view of the work of a writer who--now that close upon half a century has passed, since, in 1849, timidly and without giving her name, she launched on the world her first novel, "The Ogilvies"--has never lost her hold upon the reading public of Great Britain, the Colonies, America, or wherever the English tongue is spoken.

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Dinah Mulock was born in 1826 at Stoke-upon-Trent in Staffordshire. Her disposition towards literature seems to have been inherited from her father, who was connected--but in no very prosperous way--with letters, and was known to Byron and to the poet Moore, whose fellow countryman he was. At the time of his daughter's birth, he was acting as spiritual minister to a small congregation who were followers of what were then generally thought to be his advanced and unorthodox opinions. Few who forsake the established road for their own peculiar rut find that prosperity bears them company, and the fortunes of the Mulock family during the embryo authoress's early years were unsettled and unsatisfactory. We are all given to rebel against the clouds which overcast our youth, seldom realising that to this pinch of adverse circumstance we owe much of that power to depict the sorrows, joys, and perplexities of life in the setting forth of which Miss Mulock became so eminently successful.

Before she had reached the age of twenty, she left her home and came to London, "feeling conscious," we are told, "of a vocation for authorship."

Now, in the present day, when novel writing has become an employment, profession, distraction, I might almost say a curse, there would be nothing remarkable in such a conviction; but in 1846 the mania of desiring to see their names in print had not seized upon our sex; therefore the divine afflatus must have been very strong which sent a timid attractive girl, hampered by all the prejudices of her day, to try the fortunes of her pen in London.

That she had not been deceived in her quality is shown by the success of "The Ogilvies," which not only was popular with novel readers, but raised hopes that the writer possessed great dramatic power, to be more ably used when experience had corrected the crude faults of a first book. The story, based on passionate first love, is written with the enthusiasm and vigour which comes pleasantly from a young hand, and makes us disposed to view leniently the superabundance of sentiment which, under other circumstances, we should censure. The death of the boy, Leigh Pennythorne, is rendered with a pathos which calls for admiration, and we are not surprised to see it ranked with the death of little Paul Dombey; while that of Katherine Lynedon, spoken of at the time as possessing great dramatic force, strikes us now as melodramatic and sensational.

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