Woman's Work in English Fiction, from the Restoration to the Mid-Victorian Period

by Clara Helen Whitmore

  CHAPTER XIV

  Julia Pardoe. Mrs. Trollope. Harriet Martineau

  Somewhere between the second and third decades of the nineteenthcentury, the modern novel was born. The romances of the twenties are,for the most part, old-fashioned in tone, and speak of an earlier age;but in the thirties, the modern novel, with its exact reproduction ofplaces, customs, and speech, and strong local flavour, was full-grown.Dickens, under the name of Boz, was contributing his sketches to _TheOld Monthly Magazine_ and the _Evening Chronicle_. Thackeray wasbeginning to contribute articles to _Fraser's Magazine_, established in1830. Annuals and monthlies sprang up in the night, and paid large sumsfor long and short stories. The thirst for them was unquenchable. Manywomen were supporting themselves by writing tales which did not livebeyond the year of their publication. Mrs. Marsh was writing stories offashionable life varied by historical romances. Mrs. Crowe wrotestories of fashionable life varied by supernatural romances and tales ofadventure. In _The Story of Lilly Dawson_, published in 1847, theheroine was captured and brought up by smugglers, and the gradualdevelopment of her character was traced; thus giving to the story apsychological interest. Lady Blessington earned two thousand pounds ayear for twenty years by novels and short stories of fashionable life.Lady Blessington had a European reputation as a court beauty and abrilliant and witty conversationalist. This with the coronet must havehelped to sell her books. They do not contain even a sentence that holdsthe attention. A friend said of her, "Her genius lay in her tongue; herpen paralysed it." More enduring work in fiction was done by JuliaPardoe, Mrs. Trollope, and Harriet Martineau.

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  The novels of Julia Pardoe, like those of Mrs. Bray, owe their value,not to their intrinsic merit, but to the comparatively unknown places towhich she introduces her readers. She accompanied her father, MajorPardoe, to Constantinople, where they were entertained by natives ofhigh position, to whom they had letters of introduction, and Miss Pardoewas the guest of their wives in the harem. Her knowledge of the mode oflife and habits of thought of Turkish women is considered second onlyto that of Mary Wortley Montagu.

  The material for her story _The Romance of the Harem_ was obtainedduring her visits to these Turkish ladies. In this she has caught thelanguid, heavily perfumed atmosphere of the Orient. Besides the mainplot, stories of adventure and love are related which beguiled theslowly passing hours of the inmates of the seraglio. Some of them mighthave been told by Schehezerhade, if she had wished to add to herentertainment of _The Thousand and One Nights_.

  After Miss Pardoe's return to England, she wrote a series of fashionablenovels, inferior to many of those of Mrs. Gore, and better than the bestof those by Lady Blessington. _Confessions of a Pretty Woman_, _TheJealous Wife_, and _The Rival Beauties_ were the most popular of these,although they have long since been forgotten.

  In 1849, Miss Pardoe published a collection of stories under the title_Flies in Amber_. The title, she explains in the preface, was suggestedby a belief of the Orientals that amber comes from the sea, and attractsabout it all insects, which find in it both a prison and a posthumousexistence. Some of the stories of this collection were gathered in hertravels. _An Adventure in Bithynia_, _The Magyar and the Moslem, or anHungarian Legend_, and the _Yere-Batan-Serai_, which meansSwallowed-up Palace, the great subterranean ruin of Constantinople, havethe interest which always attaches to tales gathered by travellers inunfrequented places.

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  Mrs. Frances Trollope, the mother of the more famous author AnthonyTrollope, like Miss Pardoe, found material for stories in unfamiliarplaces. Mrs. Trollope had the nature of the pioneer. With her family,she sought our western lands of the Mississippi Valley, where the virginforest had resounded to the axe of the first settler but a short timebefore. She wrote the first book of any note describing the manners ofthe Americans; the first strong novel calling attention to the evils ofslavery in our Southern States; and the first one describing graphicallythe white slavery in the cotton-mills of Lancashire; and she is,perhaps, the only writer who began a long literary career at the age offifty-two.

  On the fourth of November, 1827, Mrs. Trollope with her three childrensailed from London, and, after about seven weeks on the sea, arrived onChristmas Day at the mouth of the Mississippi. After a brief visit inNew Orleans, this party of English travellers sailed up the river toMemphis, where, remote from the comforts of civilisation, they abode fora time under the direction of Mrs. Wright, an English lecturer who hadcome to America for the avowed purpose of proving the perfect equalityof the black and white races. But Mrs. Trollope and her family soontired of life in the wilderness, and sought Cincinnati, at that time asmall city of wooden houses, not over thirty years of age. After twoyears' residence in Cincinnati, she went by stage to Baltimore, visitedPhiladelphia and New York, and returned to England, after a sojourn ofthree and a half years in this country.

  During her residence in the United States, she made copious notes ofwhat she saw and heard. These she published the year after her return toEngland, under the title _Domestic Manners of the Americans_. At oncethe pens of all the critics were let loose upon the author. Her Americancritics declared that she knew nothing about them or their country; andtheir English friends refused to believe that the people of America hadsuch shocking bad manners.

  Mrs. Trollope reported truthfully what she saw and heard. But a frontiercity is made up of people gathered from the four corners of the earth:each family is a law unto itself; so that the speeches Mrs. Trollopecarefully set down, and the customs she depicted, were oftenpeculiarities of individuals rather than of a community. But she hasleft a vivid picture of American life in the twenties, less exaggeratedthan the picture Charles Dickens gave of it in the forties. Mrs.Trollope's attitude is no more hostile than his, but he is moreentertaining. He held us up to ridicule and laughed at us; she seriouslypointed out our errors in the hope that we might amend. She is slightlyinconsistent at times, for, while asserting the equality of whites andblacks, she as bitterly resented the equality of white master and whiteservant. Her purpose in writing this book was to warn her own countrymenof the evils which must follow a government of the many.

  Although she never takes the broad view, but always the narrow andpartial one, her book gives a good picture of the everyday life andhabits of thought of the next generation to that which had fought andwon the American Revolution. The white heat of republican fervour, soobnoxious to a European, welded the nation together as one people, andfilled their hearts with a religious reverence for the constitution. Shemeant them as a reproach, but we read these words with pride: "I neverheard from anyone a single disparaging word against their government."

  Mrs. Trollope has been described by her friends as a refined woman ofcharming personality. But as soon as she began to write, she donned herarmour and proclaimed her hostility either to her hero or to the largerpart of the characters of the book. This method is dangerous to art.Even the genius of Thackeray is lessened by his lack of sympathy.

  In 1833 Mrs. Trollope published her first novel, _The Refugee inAmerica_. It is the story of an English lord who has fled to America toescape English justice. He and his friends have settled in Rochester,New York. It was written for the sole purpose of describing the mannersof the people of our Eastern cities. The author's attitude toward themis well illustrated by a conversation between Caroline, the youngEnglish girl, and her American _protegee_, Emily. After a dinner inWashington, Caroline exclaims to her friend:

  "'Oh, my own Emily, you must not live and die where such things be.'

  "Emily sighed as she answered, 'I am born to it, Miss Gordon.'

  "'But hardly bred to it. We have caught you young, and we have spoiledyou for ever as an American lady.'"

  Three years later Mrs. Trollope published her strongest novel, _The Lifeand Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw_. This is a powerfulpicture of early life on the Mississippi; it was the first novel sinceM
rs. Behn's _Oroonoko_ which called attention to the evils of Africanslavery. It is marred, however, by want of sympathy with the communityshe is describing. Mr. Jonathan Whitlaw Senior has "squat in the bush,"an expression to which Mrs. Trollope objects, but which brings to mindat once the log cabin in the forest clearing, and the muscular, uncouthpioneer. Jonathan furnishes firewood to the Mississippi steamers, and bythis means gains sufficient wealth to carry out his life's ambition: toset up a store in Natchez, and to own "niggers." But the life of apioneer has made Jonathan as cunning as a fox. This cunning his sonJonathan, the hero of the story, has inherited to the full. As aslave-owner he is as grasping and cruel as Legree, whom Mrs. Stoweimmortalised some years later. His character, though drawn with strengthand vigour, is inconsistent. He is a miser, yet he is a gambler and aspendthrift, qualities not often found together. He is not a truerepresentative of the son of a pioneer. Clio Whitlaw, the aunt of thehero, belongs more truly to her environment. One suspects the Englishfamily at Cincinnati had received neighbourly kindnesses from women likeher. With her physical strength and great courage she is kind andneighbourly to all who need her help. The sad story of Edward Bligh, theyoung Kentuckian who preached the gospel to the slaves, the victim oflynch law, a word dreaded even then, is as thrilling as parts of _UncleTom's Cabin_.

  Besides _Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw_, Mrs. Trollope created two othercharacters that will cause her name to live as long as those of WilliamHarrison Ainsworth or G. P. R. James. The coarse scheming widow Barnabyis the heroine of three novels, _Widow Barnaby_, _The Widow Married_,and _The Widow Wedded, or the Barnabys in America_. In the last bookMrs. Trollope somewhat humorously pays off her scores against herAmerican critics, who had dubbed her a cockney, unfamiliar with goodsociety in either England or America. The Widow Barnaby, who has come toNew Orleans with her husband after his little gambling ways have maderesidence in London unpleasant, decides to earn some money by writing abook on America. She describes the Americans, not as they are, but asthey think they are. She listens to all their boasts about themselvesand country, and puts it faithfully in her book. Of course they like itand she becomes the literary lion of America.

  Anthony Trollope, in his book _An Autobiography_, said of his mother'sbooks on America: "Her volumes were very bitter; but they were veryclever, and they saved the family from ruin." She is also given thecredit of having improved the manners of American society. Whenever a"gentleman" at his club put his feet on the table, or indulged in anyliberty of which she would not have approved, others cried, "Trollope!Trollope! Trollope!"

  The _Vicar of Wrexhill_, the scene of which is laid in England, is anattack on the evangelical clergy in the Episcopal Church. The vicar isno truer to the great body of evangelical preachers than JonathanJefferson Whitlaw is true to the great body of slave-owners. There isthe same exaggeration to prove a theory. Evangelical preaching isharmful, is the theorem, and a man is selected to prove it who in anywalk of life would be a hypocrite and libertine. The book has manyinteresting situations. The vicar's proposal to the rich widow, one ofhis parishioners, is clever: "Let me henceforth be as the shield andbuckler that shall guard thee; so that thou shalt not be afraid for anyterror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day." And he promises,if she will marry him, to lead her "sinful children into the lifeeverlasting." No other book has shown, as this does, the powerful effectupon sensitive natures of this kind of preaching. One feels that thefollowers of the Reverend Vicar were under the influence of hypnoticsuggestion, and that their awakening from this spell was like theawakening from a trance.

  Mrs. Trollope was actuated by humanitarian motives. This was not asusual then as since Dickens popularised the humanitarian novel. Onlythree years after he wrote _Sketches by Boz_, Mrs. Trollope wrote _TheLife and Adventures of Michael Armstrong_, the story of a boy employedin the mills of Lancashire. Negro slavery in the South, even as Mrs.Trollope saw it, was a happy state of existence compared with childslavery in the mills of Ashleigh and Deep Valley, Lancashire, where thechildren were driven to work by the lash in the morning, and werecrippled by the "Billy roller," the name of the stick by which they werebeaten for inattention to their work during the day. If the truth ofthese horrors were not attested by other writers of this time, one woulddoubt the possibility of their existence in the same land and at thesame time in which Wordsworth was writing of the beauties of his ownchildhood, where the river Derwent mingled its murmurs with his nurse'ssong.

  Mrs. Trollope assailed injustice with a powerful pen. Woman's moralnature is truer and more sensitive than man's. Even if her sympathiescloud her judgment, it is better than that her judgment should reasonaway her sympathies. Neither has woman in her philanthropy contentedherself with broad principles which would help all and therefore reachnone. The dusky slave in the cotton-fields, the pale-faced child in thecotton-mills, have alike touched the hearts of women, who by their penshave been able to awaken the conscience of a nation. The horror of childlabour wrung from Mrs. Browning the heart-felt poem, _The Cry of theChildren_. The four strong novels proclaiming the tyranny of the whitesover the blacks, _Oronooko_, _Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw_, _Uncle Tom'sCabin_, and _The Hour and the Man_, were written by women.

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  The name of Harriet Martineau was a familiar one in every householdduring the early years of Queen Victoria's reign. Like Mrs. Trollope shewas a woman of fearless honesty. But Harriet Martineau was never the_raconteur_, she was first the educator. She wrote story after story toteach lessons in political and social science. Her method of work, asset forth in her autobiography, was peculiar, and the result is notuninteresting. In her _Political Economy Tales_, she selected certainprinciples which she wished to set forth, and embodied each principle ina character. The operations of these principles furnished the plot ofthe story. Besides the illustrations of the principles by thecharacters, the laws were discussed in conversation, and thus the lessonwas taught. In the story _Brooke and Brooke Farm_, she made use of anexpression which Ruskin almost paraphrased: "The whole nation, the wholeworld, is obliged to him who makes corn grow where it never grewbefore; and yet more to him who makes two ears ripen where only oneripened before." In the tale _A Manchester Strike_, factory life and theproblems that face the working men are set forth, the aim being to showthat work and wages depend upon the great laws of supply and demand.

  Miss Martineau wrote two novels. _Deerbrook_, in 1839, was modelled on_Our Village_. The village doctor, Mr. Hope, is the central figure. Firmin his convictions, he loses the favour of the leading families, andthrough their influence he is deprived of his practice. A fever,however, sweeps over the place and his former enemies beg, not in vain,for his skilful services. A double love story runs through the book.Mrs. Rowland, a scheming woman, is the most cleverly drawn of thecharacters, and was evidently suggested by some of Miss Edgeworth'sfashionable ladies.

  Harriet Martineau also visited America, but some years later than Mrs.Trollope, when the slavery agitation was at its height. As she hadwritten upon the evils of slavery before she left England, she wasinvited to attend a meeting of the Abolitionists in Boston. She acceptedthis invitation, and expressed there her abhorrence of slavery. Afterthis she received letters from some of the citizens of the pro-slaveryStates, threatening her life if she entered their domain. Thisnaturally threw her entirely with the Abolition party, and she wrotemany articles to help their cause.

  Miss Martineau's second novel, _The Hour and the Man_, grew out of hersympathy and belief in the coloured race. Toussaint de L'Ouverture, thedevoted slave, soldier, liberator, and martyr, is the hero. Every scenein which this wonderful black figures is vividly written. Many of theminor incidents are but slightly sketched, and many of the minorcharacters elude the reader's grasp. How far this book is a truthfulportrayal of the negro cannot be judged until the "race problem" issurveyed with unprejudiced eyes. Then and not until then will its placein literature be assigned. She gives the same characterisation of thishero o
f St. Domingo as does Wendell Phillips in his wonderful speech ofwhich the following is the peroration:

  "But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of Historywill put Phocian for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden forEngland, Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright, consummateflower of our earlier civilisation, then, dipping her pen in thesunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of thesoldier, the statesman, the martyr, TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE."

  _The Hour and the Man_ was published in 1840, and was warmly received bythe Abolitionists. William Lloyd Garrison, after reading it, wrote thefollowing sonnet to the author:

  England! I grant that thou dost justly boast Of splendid geniuses beyond compare; Men great and gallant,--women good and fair,-- Skilled in all arts, and filling every post Of learning, science, fame,--a mighty host! Poets divine, and benefactors rare,-- Statesmen,--philosophers,--and they who dare Boldly to explore heaven's vast and boundless coast, To one alone I dedicate this rhyme, Whose virtues with a starry lustre glow, Whose heart is large, whose spirit is sublime, The friend of liberty, of wrong the Foe: Long be inscribed upon the roll of time The name, the worth, the works of HARRIET MARTINEAU.

  Miss Martineau wrote on a variety of subjects, and generally held a viewcontrary to the accepted one. She wrote upon mesmerism, positivism,atheism, which she professed, and after each book warriors armed withpens sprang up to assail the author. But she had many friends, evenamong those who were most bitter against her doctrines. One wrote ofher, "There is the fine, honest, solid, North-country element in her."R. Brimley Johnson in _English Prose_, edited by Craik in 1896, said ofher writings:

  "Her gift to literature was for her own generation. She is the exponentof the infant century in many branches of thought:--its eager andsanguine philanthropy, its awakening interest in history and science,its rigid and prosaic philosophy. But her genuine humanity and realmoral earnestness give a value to her more personal utterances, which donot lose their charm with the lapse of time."

  Harriet Martineau's name and personality will be remembered in historyafter her books have been forgotten.