Part 20

I congratulate you on the approaching publication of Mr. Ruskin's new work. If the Seven Lamps of Architecture resemble their predecessor, Modern Painters, they will be no lamps at all, but a new constellation--seven bright stars, for whose rising the reading world ought to be anxiously agaze.

I am beginning to read Eckermann's Goethe--it promised to be a most interesting work. Honest, simple, single-minded Eckermann! Great, powerful, giant-souled, but also profoundly egotistical old Johann Wolfgang von Goethe! He was a mighty egotist. He thought no more of swallowing up poor Eckermann's existence in his own, than the whale thought of swallowing Jonah.

The worst of reading graphic accounts of such men, of seeing graphic pictures of the scenes, the society in which they moved, is that it excites a too tormenting longing to look on the reality; but does such reality now exist? Amidst all the troubled waters of European society, does such a vast, strong, selfish old leviathan now roll ponderous? I suppose not.

* * * * *

I often wish to say something on the "condition-of-women" question, but it is one on which so much cant has been talked, that one feels a sort of reluctance to approach it. I have always been accustomed to think that the necessity of earning one's living is not, in itself, an evil; though I feel it may become a heavy evil if health fails, if employment lacks, if the demand upon our efforts, made by the weakness of others dependent upon us becomes greater than our strength. Both sons and daughters should early be inured to habits of independence and industry.

A governess' lot is frequently, indeed, bitter, but its results are precious. The mind, feelings, and temper are subjected to a discipline equally painful and priceless. I have known many who were unhappy as governesses, but scarcely one who, having undergone the ordeal, was not ultimately strengthened and improved--made more enduring for her own afflictions, more considerate for the afflictions of others. The great curse of a single female life is its dependency; daughters, as well as sons, should aim at making their way through life. Teachers may be hard-worked, ill-paid, and despised; but the girl who stays at home doing nothing is worse off than the worse-paid drudge of a school; the listlessness of idleness will infallibly degrade her nature.

Lonely as I am, how should I be if Providence had never given me courage to adopt a career, perseverance to plead through two long weary years with publishers till they admitted me? How should I be, with youth passed, sisters lost, a resident in a moorland parish where there is not a single resident family? In that case I should have no world at all. The raven weary of surveying the deluge, and with no ark to return to, would be my type.

As it is, something like a hope and motive sustain me still. I wish every woman in England had also a hope and a motive. Alas! I fear there are many old maids who have neither.

--Adapted from Littell's Living Age.

XXXIX

THACKERAY IN AMERICA

Thackeray, like many other Englishmen of note, came to America to lecture in order to make money. He had delivered lectures in London and in other towns in England on the English Humorists. Why not use his popularity in America as a means of acquiring a little fortune for the sake of his wife and two girls. "I must and will go," he wrote to his eldest daughter, "not because I like it, but because it is right I should secure some money against my death for your mother and you two girls. And I think, if I have luck, I may secure nearly a third of the sum that I think I ought to leave behind me by a six months' tour in the States."

Let us, in order to get a first-hand impression, read from letters that he wrote from America:

"The passage is nothing, now it is over; I am rather ashamed of gloom and disquietude about such a trifling journey. I have made scores of new acquaintances and lighted on my feet as usual. I didn't expect to like people as I do, but am agreeably disappointed and find many most pleasant companions, natural and good; natural and well read and well bred too, and I suppose am none the worse pleased because everybody has read all my books and praises my lectures (I preach in a Unitarian Church, and the parson comes to hear me. His name is Mr. Bellows, it isn't a pretty name), and there are 2,000 people nearly who come, and the lectures are so well liked that it is probable I shall do them over again. So really there is a chance of making a pretty little sum of money for old age, imbecility, and those young ladies afterwards.... Broadway is miles upon miles long, a rush of life such as I have never seen; not so full as the Strand, but so rapid. The houses are always being torn down and built up again, the railroad cars drive slap into the midst of the city. There are barricades and scaffoldings banging everywhere. I have not been into a house, except the fat country one, but something new is being done to it, and the hammerings are clattering in the passage, or a wall or steps are down, or the family is going to move. Nobody is quiet here, nor am I. The rush and restlessness please me, and I like, for a little, the dash of the stream. I am not received as a god, which I like too. There is one paper which goes on every morning saying I am a snob, and I don't say no. Six people were reading it at breakfast this morning, and the man opposite me this morning popped it under the table-cloth. But the other papers roar with approbation."

In this letter, of which we have read a fragment, Mr. Thackeray inclosed a clipping from the New York Evening Post. This is what the newspaper had to say: "The building was crowded.... Every one who saw Mr. Thackeray last evening for the first time seemed to have had their impressions of his appearance and manner of speech corrected. Few expected to see so large a man; he is gigantic; six feet four at least; few expected to see so old a person; his hair appears to have kept silvery record over fifty years; and then there was a notion in the minds of many that there must be something dashing and 'fast' in his appearance, whereas his costume was perfectly plain; the expression of his face grave and earnest; his address perfectly unaffected, and such as we might expect to meet with, in a well-bred man somewhat advanced in years. His elocution also surprised those who had derived their impressions from the English journals. His voice is a superb tenor, and possesses that pathetic tremble which is so effective in what is called emotive eloquence, while his delivery was as well suited to the communication he had to make as could well have been imagined.

"His enunciation is perfect. Every word he uttered might have been heard in the remotest quarters of the room, yet he scarcely lifted his voice above a colloquial tone. The most striking feature in his whole manner was the utter absence of affectation of any kind. He did not permit himself to appear conscious that he was an object of peculiar interest in the audience, neither was he guilty of the greater error of not appearing to care whether they were interested in him or not. In other words, he inspired his audience with a respect for him, as a man proportioned to the admiration, which his books have inspired for him as an author."

From Philadelphia Thackeray writes: "Oh, I am tired of shaking hands with people, and acting the lion business night after night. Everybody is introduced and shakes hands. I know thousands of colonels, professors, editors, and what not, and walk the streets guiltily, knowing that I don't know 'em, and trembling lest the man opposite to me is one of my friends of the day before. I believe I am popular, except at Boston among the newspaper men who fired into me, but a great favorite with the monde there and elsewhere. Here in Philadelphia it is all praise and kindness. Do you know there are 500,000 people in Philadelphia? I daresay you had no idea thereof, and smile at the idea of there being a monde here and at Boston and New York.... I am writing this with a new gold pen, in such a fine gold case. An old gentleman gave it to me yesterday, a white-headed old philosopher and political economist, there's something simple in the way these kind folks regard a man; they read our books as if we were Fielding, and so forth. The other night men were talking of Dickens and Bulwer as if they were equal to Shakespeare, and I was pleased to find myself pleased at hearing them praised. The prettiest girl in Philadelphia, poor soul, has read Vanity Fair twelve times. I paid her a great big compliment yesterday, about her good looks of course, and she turned round delighted to her friend and said, 'Ai most tallut,' that is something like the pronunciation."

In another letter: "Now I have seen three great cities, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, I think I like them all mighty well. They seem to me not so civilized as our London, but more so than Manchester and Liverpool. At Boston is very good literate company indeed; it is like Edinburgh for that,--a vast amount of toryism and donnishness everywhere. That of New York the simplest and least pretentious; it suffices that a man should keep fine house, give parties, and have a daughter, to get all the world to him."

GEORGE ELIOT BECOMES A WRITER OF FICTION

As one is ready to call Elizabeth Barrett the greatest poetess of the nineteenth century, so there is little hesitation in pronouncing George Eliot the foremost of the many women who have written fiction. The literary critics sometimes dispute her supremacy by urging the claims of Jane Austen, who is said to have Shaksperean power in the delineation of character. But the name of Jane Austen is unknown to the general public. For every reader of Pride and Prejudice there are a score of readers of Adam Bede.

George Eliot is the pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans. She took the name of George because it was the first name of Mr. Lewes, and Eliot "was a good, mouth-filling, easily pronounced word."

George Eliot was almost thirty-seven years old before she began to write fiction; in this respect reminding us of Scott, who had first achieved fame as a poet before he began in his maturity to write fiction. We are happy in having from the pen of George Eliot herself the account of how she began to write fiction:

"September, 1856, made a new era in my life, for it was then I began to write fiction. It had always been a vague dream of mine that some time or other I might write a novel; and my shadowy conception of what the novel was to be, varied, of course, from one epoch of my life to another. But I never went further toward the actual writing of the novel than an introductory chapter describing a Staffordshire village and the life of the neighboring farm-houses; and as the years passed on I lost any hope that I should ever be able to write a novel."

Mr. Lewes encouraged George Eliot by admiring her introductory chapter. He first read it when they were together in Germany. When they had returned to England and she was more successful in her essay writing than he had expected, he continued to urge her to try to write a story. "He began to say very positively, 'You must try and write a story,' and when we were at Tenby he urged me to begin at once. I deferred it, however, after my usual fashion with work that does not present itself as an absolute duty. But one morning, as I was thinking what should be the subject of my first story, my thoughts merged themselves into a dreamy doze, and I imagined myself writing a story, of which the title was The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton. I was soon wide awake again and told G. (Mr. Lewes). He said 'Oh, what a capital title!' and from that time I had settled in my mind that this should be my first story. George used to say, 'It may be a failure--it may be that you are unable to write fiction. Or, perhaps, it may be just good enough to warrant your trying again.' Again, 'You may write a chef-d'oeuvre at once--there's no telling.' But his prevalent impression was, that though I could hardly write a poor novel, my effort would want the highest quality of fiction--dramatic presentation. He used to say, 'You have wit, description, and philosophy--those go a good way towards the production of a novel. It is worth while for you to try the experiment.'"

When she had finished the first part of Amos Barton, Mr. Lewes was no longer skeptical about her ability to write dialogue. The next question was whether she had the power of pathos. This was to be determined by the way in which the death of Milly was to be treated. "One night G. went to town on purpose to leave me a quiet evening for writing it. I wrote the chapter from the news brought by the shepherd to Mrs. Hackit, to the moment when Amos is dragged from the bedside, and I read it to G. when he came home. We both cried over it, and then he came up to me and kissed me, saying, 'I think your pathos is better than your fun.'"

The first part of Amos Barton appeared in the January number of Blackwood. The publisher paid the author fifty guineas. Afterwards, when the series of stories dealing with clerical life was published in book form, she was paid £120; later, when the publishing firm decided to issue a thousand copies instead of seven hundred and fifty, £60 was added to the original sum. George Eliot expressed herself as sensitive to the merits of checks for fifty guineas, but the success of her later writings was so pronounced that a check for fifty guineas would have made little impression, except a feeling of disdain.

Amos Barton was followed by Mr. Gilfil's Love Story, and Janet's Repentance. The three comprise Scenes from Clerical Life. The stories are based upon events which happened in the early life of the writer when she lived in Warwickshire. The village of Milby is really Nuneaton. When the villagers and country people read the Scenes from Clerical Life there was great excitement. Who could this George Eliot be? Some one who had lived among them and heard all the gossip of the neighborhood. But they could not recall any man with enough literary ability to do what had been done. Finally they did remember that a man, Liggins by name, had written poetry. The poetry was rather weak stuff, but perhaps his strength lay in fiction. Liggins was flattered by the suspicions of his neighbors. His own doubt was gradually changed to belief. Yes, he was the author of this new fiction, because every one said he was. The voice of the people is the voice of God. He was invited to write for a theological magazine. Finally George Eliot was obliged to reveal her identity when the public was about to subscribe a sum of money for the pseudo-literary Liggins who was so fastidious as to refuse money for the product of his genius. Here ends the career of Liggins, the liar.

One reason the villagers had for believing one of their own number was the author was based on the conversations in the Scenes from Clerical Life. Not only were they true to life, but they were conversations that had actually taken place. How did George Eliot hear them? Had she loitered in the public room of the village tavern? Mr. C.S. Olcott writes in the Outlook,--"The real conversations which were so cleverly reported were actually heard by Robert Evans, the father of George Eliot, who doubtless often visited the Bull in company with his neighbors. He repeated them to his wife, not realizing that the little daughter who listened so attentively was gifted with a marvelous memory, or that she possessed a genius that could transform a simple tale into a novel of dramatic power. Mary Ann Evans had moved to Coventry sixteen years before, and was therefore scarcely known in Nuneaton at the time the stories appeared. She then had no literary fame, and was no more likely to be thought of in this connection than any one of a hundred other school-girls."