CHAPTER XIII
Mrs. Gore. Mrs. Bray
During the second decade of the nineteenth century, while Scott waswriting some of the most powerful of the Waverley novels, a host of newwriters sprang into popular notice. John Galt, William HarrisonAinsworth, and G. P. R. James began their endless series of historicalromances, while in 1827, Bulwer Lytton and Benjamin Disraeli introducedto the reading public, as the representatives of fashionable society,_Falkland_ and _Vivian Grey_. The decade was prolific also in novels bywomen. Jane Austen had died in 1817, but Maria Edgeworth, Lady Morgan,the Porters, Amelia Opie, Miss Ferrier, Mrs. Shelley and Miss Mitfordwere still writing; during this period, Mrs. S. C. Hall began her workin imitation of Miss Mitford, while Mrs. Gore and Mrs. Bray took up thegoose-quill, piled reams of paper on their desks, and began theirliterary careers.
About a score of years before Thackeray tickled English society withpictures of its own snobbery, Mrs. Gore, a young woman, wife of anofficer in the Life Guards, saw through the many affectations of thepolite world, and in a series of novels, pointed out its ludicrouspretences with lively wit. Mrs. Gore has suffered, however, from themultiplicity of her writings. During the years between 1823, when shewrote her first novel, _Theresa Marchmont_, and 1850, when, quite blind,she retired from the world of letters, she published two hundred volumesof novels, plays, and poems. Her plots are often hastily constructed,her men and women dimly outlined, but she is never dull. No writer sinceCongreve has so many sparkling lines. She has been likened to Horace,and if we compare her wit with that of Thackeray, who by the wayridiculed her in his _Novels by Eminent Hands_, her humour has qualitiesof old Falernian, beside which his too frequently has the bitter flavourof old English beer. The Englishman is inclined to take his wit, likehis sports, too seriously, and to mingle with it a little of the spiceof envy. Mrs. Gore has none of this, however, and skims along thesurface of fashionable life with a grace and ease and humour extremelydiverting.
Her writings are so voluminous that one can only make excerpts atrandom. One of the liveliest is _Cecil, or the Adventures of a Coxcomb_,a humorous satire on _Vivian Grey_. "The arch-coxcomb of hiscoxcombical time" had become a coxcomb at the age of six months, when hefirst saw himself in the mirror, from which time his nurse stopped hiscrying by tossing him in front of a looking-glass. His curls made him soattractive that at six years of age he was admitted to his mother'sboudoir, from which his red-headed brother was excluded, and hesuperseded the spaniel in her ladyship's carriage. With the loss of hiscurls went the loss of favour. He did not prosper at school, and wasrusticated after a year's residence at Oxford. Here he formed anacquaintance which helped him much in the world of coxcombry. Thoughthis man was not well born, he was an admitted leader among gentlemen.Cecil soon discovered that his high social position was due entirely tohis impertinence, and he made this wise observation: "Impudence is thequality of a footman; impertinence of his master. Impudence is a thingto be rebutted with brute force; impertinence requires wit for theputting down." So he matched his wit with this man's impertinence, andthey became sworn friends.
When Cecil went to London, he found that "people had supped full ofhorrors, during the Revolution, and were now devoted to elegiacmeasures. My languid smile and hazel eyes were the very thing to settlethe business of the devoted beings left for execution." Of course allthe women fell desperately in love with him. "I had always apredisposition to woman-slaughter, with extenuating circumstances, aswell as a stirring consciousness of the exterminating power," heexplains to us. Like Childe Harold and Vivian Grey, this coxcomb soonbecame weary of London, and travelled through Europe in an indolent way,for after all it was his chief pleasure "to lie in an airy French bed,showered over with blue convolvulus," and read tender billets from theladies. This book was an excellent antidote to the Byronic fever, thenat its height.
In her _Sketches of English Character_, Mrs. Gore describes differentmen who were in her time to be met with in the social life of London.The Dining-Out Man thus speaks for himself:
"Ill-natured people fancy that the life of a dining-out man is a life ofcorn, wine, and oil; that all he has to do is to eat, drink and bemerry. I only know that, had I been aware in the onset of life, of all Ishould have to go through in my vocation, I would have chosen someeasier calling. I would have studied law, physic, or divinity."
In the sketches of _The Clubman_, she assigns John Bull's dislike ofladies' society as the reason for the many clubs in the Englishmetropolis:
"While admitting woman to be a divinity, he chooses to conceal his idolin the Holy of Holies of domestic life. Duly to enjoy the society ofMrs. Bull, he chooses a smoking tureen, and cod's head and shoulders tointervene between them, and their olive branches to be around theirtable.... For John adores woman in the singular, and hates her in theplural; John loves, but does not like. Woman is the object of hispassion, rarely of his regard. There is nothing in the gaiety of heartor sprightliness of intellect of the weaker sex which he considers anaddition to society. To him women are an interruption to business andpleasure."
Mrs. Gore could also unveil hypocrisy. In her novel _Preferment, or MyUncle the Earl_, she thus describes a worthy ornament of the church:
"The Dean of Darbington glided along his golden railroad--'mild asmoonbeams'--soft as a swansdown muff--insinuating as a silken earedspaniel. His conciliating arguments were whispered in a tone suitable tothe sick chamber of a nervous hypochondriac, and his strain of argumentresembled its potations of thin, weak, well-sweetened barley water.While Dr. Macnab succeeded with _his_ congregation by kicking andbullying them along the path of grace, Dr. Nicewig held out his fingerwith a coaxing air and gentle chirrup, like a bird-fancier decoying acanary."
A critic in the _Westminster Review_ in 1831 thus writes of her:
"Mrs. Gore has a perfectly feminine knowledge of all the weaknesses andabsurdities of an ordinary man of fashion, following the routine ofLondon life in the season. She unmasks his selfishness with admirableacuteness; she exposes his unromantic egotism, with delightfulsauciness. Her portraits of women are also executed with great spirit;but not with the same truth. In transferring men to her canvas, she hasrelied upon the faculty of observation, usually fine and vigilant in awoman; but when portraying her own sex, the authoress has perhaps lookedwithin; and the study of the internal operations of the human machine isa far more complex affair, and requires far more extensive experience,and also different faculties, from those necessary to acquire a perfectknowledge of the appearances on the surface of humanity."
Notwithstanding Mrs. Gore touches so lightly on the surface of life,certain definite sociological and moral principles underlie her work.She is as democratic as Charlotte Smith, Mrs. Inchbald, Miss Mitford, oreven William Godwin. She asserts again and again that men of inferiorbirth with the same opportunities of education may be as intellectualand refined as the sons of a "hundred earls." Those members of thearistocracy who fail to recognise the true worth of intelligent men ofplebeian origin are made very ridiculous. In her novel _Pin Money_,published in 1831, how very funny is Lady Derenzy's speech when shelearns that a soap manufacturer is being feted in fashionable society!Lady Derenzy, by the way, is the social law-giver to her little coterie:
"It is now some years," said she, "since the independence of America,and the influence exerted in this country by the return of a large bodyof enlightened men, habituated to the demoralising spectacle of anequalisation of rank, was supposed to exert a pernicious influence onthe minds of the secondary and inferior classes of Great Britain. Atthat critical moment I whispered to my husband, 'Derenzy! be true toyourself, and the world will be true to you. Let the aristocracy ofGreat Britain unite in support of the Order; and it will maintain itsground against the universe!' Lord Derenzy took my advice, and thecountry was saved.
"Again, when the assemblage of the States General of France,--the fataltocsin of the revolution,--spread consternation and horror throughoutthe higher ranks of every European country, and th
e very name of theguillotine operated like a spell on the British peerage, I whispered tomy husband, 'Derenzy! be true to yourself, and the world will be trueto you. Let the aristocracy of Great Britain unite in support of theOrder; and it will maintain its ground against the universe!' Again LordDerenzy took my advice, and again the country was saved."
Mrs. Gore has so cleverly mingled the so-called self-made men and men ofinherited rank in her books that one cannot distinguish between them. In_The Soldier of Lyons_, one of her early novels, which furnished Bulwerwith the plot of his play _The Lady of Lyons_, the hero, a peasant bybirth and a soldier of the Republic, enters into a marriage contractwith the widow of a French marquis, in order to save her from theguillotine. This lady of high rank learns to respect her husband, andbecomes the suitor for his love. In _The Heir of Selwood_, a formerfield marshal of Napoleon, a peasant, devotes his energies to improvingthe condition of the poor on the estate he had won by his services tohis country, and at his death his tenants erected a column to hismemory, bearing the inscription: "Most dear to God, to the king, and tothe people."
Mrs. Gore constantly asserts that the only distinctions between men arebased upon character and ability. She says of one of her characters, apoet:
"His footing in society is no longer dependent upon the caprice of adrawing-room. It is the security of that intellectual power which forcesthe world to bend the knee. The poor, dreamy boy, self-taught,self-aided, had risen into power. He wields a pen. And the pen in ourage weighs heavier in the social scale than a sword of a Norman baron."
Mrs. Gore lived at a time when the introduction of machinery and theestablishment of large factories was producing a new type of man: menlike Burtonshaw in _The Hamiltons_: "A practical, matter-of-factindividual, with plenty of money and plenty of intellect; the sort ofhuman power-loom one would back to work wonders against a dawdling oldspinning-jenny like Lord Tottenham."
A critic in the _Westminster Review_ wrote in 1832 as follows:
"The wealthy merchant or money-dealer is represented, perhaps for thefirst time in fiction, as a man of true dignity, self-respect,education, and thorough integrity, agreeable in manners, refined intastes, and content with, if not proud of, his position in society."
Mrs. Gore was called by her contemporaries the novelist of the new era.
She was also interested in the great ethical questions of life. She didnot write of the love of youthful heroes and more youthful heroines. Sheoften traced the consequences of sin on character and destiny. In _TheHeir of Selwood_, she is as stern a moralist in tracing the effects ofvice as George Eliot. _The Banker's Wife_, the scene of which is laidamong the merchants of London, is a serious study of the sorrows of alife devoted to outward show. The picture of the banker among hisguests, whose wealth, unknown to them, he has squandered, reminds one ofthe days before the final overthrow of Dombey and Son.
Mrs. Gore was a woman of genius. With the stern principles of thepuritan, and feelings as republican as the mountain-born Swiss, she wasnever controversial. She saw the absurdities of certain hollowpretensions of society, but her good-humoured raillery offended no one.If her two hundred volumes could be weeded of their verbiage by somedevotee of literature, and reduced to ten or fifteen, they would be notonly entertaining reading, but would throw strong lights upon the_elite_ of London in the days when hair-oils, pomades, and strongperfumes were the distinguishing marks of the Quality.
* * * * *
Mrs. Gore owed her place in English letters to native wit and ability;Mrs. Bray owed hers to hard study and painstaking endeavour. She was oneof the few women who followed the style of writing brought to perfectionby Sir Walter Scott.
Mrs. Bray became imbued with the historic spirit early in life. Herfirst husband was Charles Stothard, the author of _Monumental Effigiesof Great Britain_, with whom she travelled through Brittany, Normandyand Flanders. While he made careful drawings of the ruins of castles andabbeys, she read Froissart's _Chronicles_, visited the places which hehas described, and traced out among the people any surviving customswhich he has recorded.
Two novels were the result of these studies. _De Foix, or Sketches ofthe Manners and Customs of the Fourteenth Century_, is a story of GastonPhoebus, Count de Foix, whose court Froissart visited, and of whom hewrote: "To speak briefly and truly, the Count de Foix was perfect inperson and in mind; and no contemporary prince could be compared withhim for sense, honour, or liberality." _The White Hoods_, a name bywhich the citizens of Ghent were denominated, is laid in theNetherlands, and tells of the conflict between the court and thecitizens of Ghent, under Philip von Artaveld, during the reign ofCharles the Fifth of France and the early kingship of Charles the Sixth.As in all her novels, the accuracy for which she strove in the mostminute details retards the action of the plot, but adds to thehistorical value of these romances.
For the tragic romance of _The Talba, or Moor of Portugal_, Mrs. Bray,as she had not visited the Spanish peninsula, depended upon her reading.The plot was suggested to her by a picture of Ines de Castro in theRoyal Academy. It represented the gruesome coronation of the corpse ofInes de Castro, six years after her death. Thus did her husband, DonPedro, show honour to his wife, who had been put to death while he, thena prince, was serving in the army of Portugal. The whole story is afitting theme for tragedy, and was at one time dramatised by MaryMitford. In order to give her mind the proper elevation for theimpassioned scenes of this novel, it was Mrs. Bray's custom to read achapter of Isaiah or Job each day before beginning to write.
After the death of her first husband, Mrs. Bray married the vicar ofTavistock, and for thirty-five years lived in the vicarage of that town.Here she became interested in the legends of Devon and Cornwall, andwrote five novels founded upon the history of tradition of thosecounties. _Henry de Pomeroy_ opens at the abbey of Tavistock, one of theoldest abbeys in England, during the reign of Richard Coeur-de-Leon.The scene of _Fitz of Fitz-Ford_ is also laid at Tavistock, but duringthe reign of Queen Elizabeth. Another story of the reign of the VirginQueen was _Warleigh, or the Fatal Oak: a Legend of Devon_. _Courtenay ofWalreddon: a Romance of the West_ takes place in the reign of Charlesthe First, about the commencement of the Civil War. A gypsy girl, byname Cinderella Small, is introduced into the story, and has been highlypraised. The character, as well as some of the stories told of her, wasdrawn from life.
But the most famous of these novels is _Trelawny of Trelawne; or theProphecy: a Legend of Cornwall_, a story of the rebellion of Monmouth.Like most of the romances upon English themes, the private history ofthe family furnishes the romance, the historical happenings being usedonly for the setting: the usual method of Scott. The hero of this novelis Sir Jonathan Trelawny, one of the seven bishops who were committed tothe Tower by James the Second. When he was arrested by the king'scommand, the Cornish men rose one and all, and marched as far as Exeter,in their way to extort his liberation. Trelawny is a popular hero ofCornwall, as the following lines testify:
A good sword and a trusty hand! A merry heart and true! King James's men shall understand What Cornish lads can do!
And have they fixed the where and when? And shall Trelawny die? Here's twenty thousand Cornish men Will know the reason why!
Out spake their captain brave and bold, A merry wight was he-- "If London Tower were Michael's hold, We'll set Trelawny free!"
We'll cross the Tamar, land to land, The Severn is no stay, All side to side, and hand to hand, And who shall say us nay?
And when we come to London Wall, A pleasant sight to view, Come forth! Come forth! Ye cowards all, To better men than you!
Trelawny he's in keep and hold-- Trelawny he may die, But here's twenty thousand Cornish bold Will know the reason why!
Like Scott, Mrs. Bray went about with notebook in hand, and noted thefeatures of the landscape, the details of a ruin, or the furniture orarmour of the period of which she was writing. It is this painstakingwork, together with the fact that
she had access to places and booksthat were then denied to the ordinary reader, and chose subjects andplaces not before treated in fiction, that gives permanent value to herwritings. She also had the proper feeling for the past, and dignity andelevation of style. Sometimes an entire page of her romances might beattributed to the pen of the "Mighty Wizard." Perhaps the highestcompliment that can be paid her as an artist is that she resembles Scottwhen he is nodding.
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