Charlotte Smith- Collected Poetical Works

by Charlotte Smith

  “The most picturesque and interesting passage, in my opinion, is the first appearance of Manon in chains. Afterwards you grow tired of situations that bear a near resemblance to each other, and it was with difficulty I could get through the second volume.

  “To dwell on the improbabilities of the story, would be a waste of criticism; and the hair-combining scene is so ridiculously French, that I wonder Mrs Smith did not omit it. So much love and improbability cannot, however, fail to give it many admirers. I am, dear madam, &e. &c.

  GEORGE STEEVENS.”

  I have before observed, that it was accident, rather than choice, which directed Mrs Smith to this little work, which (exclusive of the severe though just criticism of Mr Steevens) was the cause of great vexation; however, had she had the power of selecting from among the most celebrated of the French Novelists, and even from those more recently published — however admired and extolled, it may be questioned if she had not incurred the same censure; and those who insist on strict morality must seek it from a purer source.

  Soon after the publication of Manon L’Escaut, Mrs Smith received from her publisher at Chichester the following letter, which had appeared in the Public Advertiser.

  “SIR,

  “Literary frauds should be made known as soon as discovered; please to acquaint the public that the novel called Manon L’Escaut, just published in two volumes octavo, has been twice before printed in English, once annexed to the Marquis de Bretagne, and once by itself, under the title of the Chevalier de Grieux — it was written by the Abbé Prevost about 40 or 50 years ago. I am, sir, your old correspondent,

  “SCOURGE.”

  The Publisher added, “I have seen Mr Cadell, who was apprehensive that the reviewers would lay hold of this letter, and that such an assertion would be of ill consequence, not only in regard to the sale of the book, but to himself, as the public would consider him as endeavouring to impose on it, and his reputation might be injured. I take the liberty of repeating this to you, because, as I assured Mr Cadell, the circumstance was as unknown to you as to himself. The sale is at present at a stand. I am, madam, &c.”

  Thus were Mrs Smith’s laudable exertions embittered by the attacks, either of wanton and unprovoked malice, or the artifice of a concealed enemy; and, in aggravation of her private misfortunes, she was taught to feel all the penalties and discouragement attached to the profession of an author. She was not without her suspicions of the quarter from whence this blow was aimed, though it would be difficult to discover the motive; and the following letter will show which way her conjectures pointed.

  TO MISS — .

  “When I found, from your first communication of Mr— ‘s critique, that he greatly disapproved this humble story, which I hardly imagined he would think it worth his while to read, I hoped that what he could not praise, he would at least forbear to blame; but it seems even if I had been under the circumstances which he says could alone justify, or rather palliate, the dispensation of such literary poison, it is evident such a plea would not have softened the asperity of his criticism, or slacken his invincible zeal for public justice, in detecting what he terms a literary fraud: which seems to me a term rather harsh, for I really see no fraud in a person endeavouring to make a better translation of a work already translated. A fraud means a thing which the imposer hopes to make pass for what it is not. This, surely, could not be the case with the book in question. I never pretended it was otherwise than a translation; and whether it was the first or the second, I was as perfectly ignorant as I believe most of my readers were; and had I been as well-informed as Mons. Scourge himself, I should have thought it very immaterial, for I am persuaded the former translations are very little known, and have probably been out of print for years. I will venture to say, they are not to be found in any catalogue of the circulating libraries; and perhaps are only known to those who would take the pains to seek after such trumpery; and I leave to your suggestion whether any one is so likely to take the trouble as your friend, or so likely to succeed if he did. Do not imagine, however, I mean to bounce and fly in the * * * style, about this said letter; I only wish it had not happened, and that he had given the book a more gentle damnation, and at least have suffered it to have lived its day, which is all I expected. As it is, I shall withdraw the book rather than let Cadell suffer.

  “I have the pleasure to add, that the last edition of the Sonnets is, as Jacques informs me, so nearly all sold, that it is high time to consider of another edition, which, however, I shall not do hastily, as I intend they shall appear in a very different form as to size and correctness, and I think I shall be able to add considerably to the bulk of the volume.”

  In comparing this instance of wanton malignity with traits of the same description, related by Miss Hawkins, in her “Anecdotes,” of which Garrick was the object, and one mentioned by Mr Hayley, in his Memoirs, there can be no doubt but this arrow came from the same quiver. Those gentlemen lived in habits of intimacy with the celebrated editor of Shakspeare; Mrs Smith had no personal acquaintance with him, and could never have excited his spleen or his envy!

  Mrs Smith was at this time employed in translating some of the most remarkable trials, from Les Causes Célébrés, which were published under the title of “The Romance of Real Life,” which, from the great difficulty attending it, helped to complete her disgust, and determined her to rely in future on her own resources, and to employ herself in original composition.

  In the spring of 1786, her eldest son was appointed to a writership in Bengal, and though he went out with more than usual advantages, it was a severe trial to a most tender and anxious mother; but an affliction yet more poignant awaited her in the same year, when her second son was carried off, after only thirty-six hours’ illness, by a fever of the most malignant nature, which, spreading through the family, reduced several of the children and servants to the brink of the grave; but by her personal exertions they were restored, and she escaped the infection.

  They were at this time residing at Woolbeding House, near Midhurst, which they had engaged after their return from France in 1785; but Mrs Smith was not destined to be stationary in any residence. An increasing incompatibility of temper, which had rendered her union a source of misery for twenty-three years, determined her on separating from her husband; and, after an ineffectual appeal to one of the members of the family to assist her in the adjustment of the terms, but with the entire approbation of her most dispassionate and judicious friends, she withdrew from Woolbeding House, accompanied by all her children, some of them of an age to judge for themselves, and who all decided on following the fortunes of their mother.

  She settled in a small house in the environs of Chichester, and her husband, soon afterwards finding himself involved in fresh difficulties, again retired to the continent, after having made some ineffectual efforts to induce her to return to him. They sometimes met after this period, and constantly corresponded, Mrs Smith never relaxing in her endeavours to afford him every assistance, and bring the family affairs to a final arrangement; but they never afterwards resided together. Though the decisive step she had taken in quitting her husband’s house, was perhaps, under the then existing circumstances, unavoidable, yet I have been told, the manner was injudicious, and that she should have insisted on previous legal arrangements, and secured to herself the enjoyment of her own fortune. That she was liable to much unmerited censure, was a matter of course; but those who knew the dessous des cartes, could only regret that the measure had not been adopted years before.

  The summer of 1787 saw Mrs Smith established in her cottage at Wyhe, pursuing her literary occupations with much assiduity and delight, supplying to her children the duties of both parents. It was here that she began and completed, in the space of eight months, her first, and perhaps most pleasing, novel of Emmeline, and its success was very general. It was published in the spring of 1788, and the whole of the first edition, 1500, sold so rapidly, that a second was immediately called for; and the lat
e Mr Cadell found his profits so considerable, that he had the liberality, voluntarily, to augment the price he had agreed to give for it. The success of her volume of Sonnets was equally gratifying, and, exclusive of profit and reputation, procured her many valuable friends and estimable acquaintances, and some in the most exalted ranks of life; and it was not the least pleasing circumstance to a mother’s heart, that her son in Bengal owed his promotion in the civil service to her talents.

  The novel of Ethelinde was published in 1789; Celestina in 1791.

  She had quitted her cottage near Chichester, and lived sometimes in or near London, but chiefly at Brighthelmstone, where she formed acquaintances with some of the most violent advocates of the French Revolution, and unfortunately caught the contagion, though in direct opposition to the principles she had formerly professed, and to those of her family.

  It was during this paroxysm of political fever that she wrote the novel of Desmond; a work which has been greatly condemned, not only on account of its politics, hot its immoral tendency. I leave its defence to an abler pen, and content myself with regretting its consequences. It lost her some friends, and famished others with an excuse for withholding their interest in favour of her family, and brought a host of literary ladies in array against her, armed with all the malignity which envy could inspire!

  She bad been in habits of intimacy for the two or three last years with Mr Hayley, (as well as with his lady,) then at the height of his poetical reputation, but this was a distinction not to be enjoyed with impunity. His praise was considered as an encroachment on the rights of other muses, (as he was accustomed to call his poetical female friends,) each of whom claimed the monopoly of his adulation. In the present day the prize would scarcely be thought worth contending for. In 1792, Mrs Smith made one of the party at Eastham, when Cowper visited that spot. In 1799, her third son, who was serving as an ensign in the 14th regiment of infantry, lost his leg at Dunkirk; (This estimable young man died a few yean after, of the yellow fever, in Barbadoes.) and her own health began to sink under the pressure of so many afflictions, and continual harassing circumstances in which the family property was involved, in the arrangement of which her exertions were incessant. She removed to Bath, but received no benefit from the use of the waters. An imperfect gout had fixed itself on her hands, probably increased by the constant use of the pen, which nevertheless she continued to employ, though some of her fingers were become contracted. Her second daughter had been married to a gentleman of Normandy, who had emigrated at the beginning of the Revolution. She fell into a decline after her first confinement, and died at Clifton in the spring of 1794. It would be impossible to describe the affliction Mrs Smith experienced on this occasion. Mothers only can comprehend it! From this time she became more than ever unsettled, moving from place to place in search of that tranquillity she was never destined to enjoy, yet continuing her literary occupation with astonishing application.

  The dates of her different works are recorded in the Censura Literaria, with the omission of a History of England for the use of young persons, which, I believe, was incomplete, and finished by some other person; and a Natural History of Birds, which was published in 1807.

  The delays in the settlement of the property, which was equally embarrassing to all parties, at length induced one of them to propose a compromise; and, by the assistance of a noble friend, an adjustment of the respective claims was effected, but not without considerable loss on all sides. Still she derived great satisfaction that her family would be relieved from the difficulties she had so long contended with, although she was personally but little benefitted by it. So many years of mental anxiety and exertion had completely undermined a constitution, which nature seemed to have formed to endure unimpaired to old age; and, convinced that her exhausted frame was sinking under increasing infirmity, she determined on removing into Surrey, from a desire that her mortal remains might be laid with those of her mother, and many of her father’s family, in Stoke Church, near Guildford. In 1803, she removed from Frans, near Tunbridge, to the village of Elsted, in the neighbourhood of Godalming. In the winter of 1804, I spent some time with her, when she was occupied in composing her charming little work for the use of young persons, entitled “Conversations,” which she occasionally wrote in the common sitting-room of the family, with two or three lively grandchildren playing about her, and conversing with great cheerfulness and pleasantry, though nearly confined to her sofa, in great bodily pain, and in a mortifying state of dependence on the services of others, but in the full possession of all her faculties; a blessing of which she was most justly sensible, and for which she frequently expressed her gratitude to the Almighty.

  In the following year she removed to Tilford, near Farnham, where her long sufferings were finally dosed, on the 28th of October 1806, in her 58th year. Mr Smith’s death took place the preceding March. She was buried at Stoke, in compliance with her wishes, where a neat monument, executed by Bacon, is erected to her memory, and that of two of her sons, Charles and George, both of whom perished in the West Indies, in the service of their country.

  To this sketch of the Life of this admirable and much-injured woman, I am induced to attempt a delineation of her character, which, I think, has been as much misunderstood by her admirers, as it has been misrepresented by her enemies. Those who have formed their ideas of her from her works, and even from what she says, in her moments of despondency, of herself, have naturally concluded that she was of a melancholy disposition; but nothing could be more erroneous. Cheerfulness and gaiety were the natural characteristics of her mind; and though circumstances of the most depressing nature at times weighed down her spirit to the earth, yet such was its buoyancy that it quickly returned to its level. Even in the darkest periods of her life, she possessed, the power of abstracting herself from her cares; and, giving play to the sportiveness of her imagination, could make even the difficulties she was labouring under subjects of merriment, placing both persons and things in such ridiculous points of view, and throwing out such sallies of pleasantry, that it was impossible not to be delighted with her wit, even while deploring the circumstances that excited it. It was said, by the confessor of the celebrated Madame de Coulanges, that her sins were all epigrams: the observation might have been applied with equal propriety to Mrs Smith, who frequently gave her troubles a truly epigrammatic turn; she particularly exulted in little pieces of humorous poetry, in which she introduces so much fancy and elegance, that one cannot but regret, that, though some of them still exist, they are unintelligible except to the very few survivors who may yet recollect, with a melancholy pleasure, the circumstances that gave rise to them. She was very successful in parodies, and did not spare even her own poetry. In the society of persons she liked, and with whom she was under no restraint, with those who understood, and could enjoy her peculiar vein of humour, nothing could be more spirited, more racy, than her conversation; every sentence had its point, the effect of which was increased by the uncommon rapidity with which she spoke, as if her ideas flowed too fast for utterance; but among strangers, and with persons with whom she could not, or fancied she could not, assimilate, she was cold, silent, and abstracted, disappointing those who had sought her society in the expectation of entertainment.

  Notwithstanding her constant literary occupations, she never adopted the affectations, the inflated language, and exaggerated expressions, which literary ladies are often distinguished by, but always expressed herself with the utmost simplicity. She composed with greater facility than others could transcribe, and never would avail herself of an amanuensis, always asserting that it was more trouble to find them in comprehension than to execute the business herself; in fact, the quickness of her conception was such, that she made no allowance for the slower faculties of others, and her impetuosity seldom allowed her time to explain herself with the precision required by less ardent minds. This hastiness of temper was one of the greatest shades in her character, and one of her greatest misfortunes. As her
feelings were acute, she expressed her resentments with an asperity, the imprudence of which she was not aware of till it was too late, though perhaps she had forgotten the offence, and forgiven the offender, in ten minutes; but those who smarted under the severity of her lash were not so easily appeased, and she certainly created many enemies, from acting too frequently from the impulse of the moment.

  She was always the friend of the unfortunate, and spared neither her time, her talents, nor even her purse, in the cause of those she endeavoured to serve; and with a heart so warm, it may easily be believed she was frequently the dupe of her benevolence. The poor always found in her a kind protectress, and she never left any place of residence without bearing with her their prayers and regrets.

  No woman had greater trials as a wife; very few could have acquitted themselves so well! But her conduct for twenty-three years speaks for itself. She was a most tender and anxious mother, and if she carried her indulgence to her children too far, it is an error too general to be very severely reprobated. To shield them as much as possible from the mortifying consequences of loss of fortune, was the object of her indefatigable exertions. Her reward was in their affection and gratitude, and in the approval of her own heart. If she derived a high degree of gratification in the homage paid to her talents, it was embittered by the envenomed shafts of envy and bigotry, and by the calumnies of anonymous defamers. By some she has been censured, because there is no religion in her works, though I believe there is not a line that implies the want of it in herself; and I am of opinion that Mrs Smith would have considered it as a subject much too sacred to be needlessly and irreverently brought forward in a work of fiction adapted for the hours of relaxation, not for those of serious reflection. Nor was it then the fashion of the day, as it has become since. No one then took up a novel in the expectation of finding a sermon. “Religious Courtships” had not been revived, nor had Cœlebs commenced his peregrinations in Search of a Wife. In introducing politics in one of her works, she incurred equal censure, and with greater reason; it was sinning against good taste in a female writer — perhaps there was a little personal spleen mixed up with her patriotism.