A MEMOIR OF SUSAN FERRIER.*

Miss FERRIER'S letters, though by far the largest, are by no means the best part of this Memoir, which, though it contains much that is interesting, might well have been reduced by half. Mr. Doyle's criticism on Miss Ferrier's novels, and her own delightful little Memoir of her father, together with her correspondence with Miss Clavering, serve to leaven the lump, which is still, however, somewhat heavy. Miss Ferrier's nephew contributes the account of her father's youth which his aunt wrote for him and marked "Private." The father of the novelist was the "Uncle Adam" of Inheritance, whom Mr. Doyle thus describes :—

" Affectionate and generous by nature, grudging, petty, and

Memoir of Susan leveler. By John A. Doyle. London: John Murray. 18s

suspicious by training, never forgetting his early love, yet ashamed of anything like the least show of emotion, neither side of his character ever allowed to have free play for a moment without reproach or interference from the other, he was thus in a state of chronic self-torment and restlessness."

James Ferrier had a strange upbringing. Though the son of well-to-do parents, he passed the first thirteen years of his life in a labourer's cottage near Linlithgow. As an infant he was put out to nurse, according to the prevailing custom of Scotland in the middle of the last century. When he came home, though only two years old, " his affections were so riveted to his nurse that the separation seemed likely to coat him his life."

He was accordingly returned to her. Later on attempts were made to get him to live at home, but "every method that was tried proved in vain. When forcibly withheld from his nurse he neither ate nor slept, but either wept or pined, or else contrived to make his escape and find his way to the poor cottage where nothing awaited him but scant fare and a fond welcome." In after-life Mr. Ferrier used to say that he had never known what it was to see a plentiful meal on the table, and had scarcely ever had as much as he wished to eat. His

father stopped his allowance to his foster-parents in the hope that they would not keep the boy if they gained nothing by him. But this drastic measure had no effect. He and his brothers met daily at the Linlithgow Grammar School, and went their several ways home. At thirteen he 'voluntarily went back to his parents, and at fourteen his father placed him in the office of an Edinburgh Writer to the Signet, and allowed him £10 a year. With this allowance and the little money he earned, he not only "supported himself respectably, but procured masters for such branches of education as he had not hitherto had opportunities of acquiring." Luckily Mr. Campbell, the

Writer to the Signet, took a fancy to him, and soon looked upon him as the heir of his business, which was large and aristocratic.

Accommodation was scant in Edinburgh at this time (about 1760). " Mr. Campbell lived in a flat in James's Court, with a pretty large family of children, in which all his business was carried on, and when the Duke of Argyll or any of the prin- cipal clients dined with their agent, the only drawing-room was Mr. and Mrs. Campbell's bed-room." James Ferrier had a little room in the Campbells' flat, where he did his work.

It had no fireplace. At twe my-three he married a farmer's daughter without a penny, and when, soon after, Mr. Campbell died he inherited his business, and apparently the friendship of all his clients, including the Duke of Argyll. This friendship continued all his life, and was of great service to his family.

Susan, the novelist, was the youngest of Mr. Ferrier's children. Her mother died before she was grown up, her brothers and sisters married, and she remained, keeping her father's house, in summer at Morningside, just outside the town, and in winter in George Street. Her first novel, Marriage, was written in conjunction with her friend, Miss

Clavering, one of the Argyll family. This lady actually wrote but a very small part of the book, and that part is

certainly the least interesting, but her criticisms, expressed in her letters while it was being written, are quite excellent, and, we gather, modified the story a good deal. She urged Miss Ferrier to multiply her Scotch scenes and curtail her London ones ; to give her readers more of Miss Griszie and less of Lady Juliana. " I don't like those high-life conversa- tions," she says ; "at best they but amuse by putting one in mind of other novels, not by recalling to anybody what they ever heard or saw in real life. The first part of the book will please because the scenes are original in a. book and taken from nature." Certainly the hysterical fine ladies of Marriage are dull. They are always, as Lady Juliana's maid says, "oat of one fit into another," but " Miss Grizzie," and indeed all the people in Glenfern, are inimitable. The sordid common- sense of the small landowners, and the terms of obsequious intimacy on which they live with the great ones, are admirably described with much humour and not a little cynicism. Money is scarce in this society. Miss Grizzle hears with

delight that her nephew has come into £700 a year. "£700 a year ! " she exclaims. " There's a deal of eating and drinking in £700 a year properly managed." Charity she considered extravagance ; and if it surpassed that of Lady Maclaughlan,

presumption. "I really think it's disrespectful to Sir Sampson and Lady Maclaughlan in anybody, and especially in such near neighbours, to give more in charity than they do, for you may be sure they give as much as

they think proper, and they must be the best judges, and can afford to give what they please." To return from Miss Ferrier's novel to Miss Ferrier's life. She only got £150 from Blackwood for Marriage, when at last her friends prevailed on her to publish it. However, it made a great success, and Blackwood offered her £1,000 for her next book, The Inheritance. This did not succeed, or rather did not sell, so well. There is nothing in the letters relating to the weaving of this second tale. The friendship with Miss Clavering seems to have cooled about this time, and Miss Ferrier did not confide her literary plans to her sisters or her other correspondents. We think The Inheritance suffered by the loss of this intimacy; the humour is more rollicking than in Marriage, and the didacticism more plentiful and more nauseous. Still, the humour is there, and we confess to having a simple enough taste to laugh over the mistakes of Lady Rosaville's ignorant cousins, who unfortunately call on her when she is entertaining the Duchess. " This is beautiful,' said Mrs. Larkins, displaying some fine engravings. Dear ! is that Fishie,' exclaimed her daughter. ' Peseechie, my dear,' whispered Mr. Larkins, a little ashamed of her mispro- nunciation. Lady Roseville could almost have cried at this malaprop murder of 'Psyche' by Mrs. Tighe." The chief events of Miss Ferrier's quiet life were her visits to Abbots- ford. Mr. Doyle quotes a sad little sketch which Miss Ferrier gave of the first evening of one of her visits:—

" There is a dinner party, when Wilkie and the Fergussons are present. Mrs. Lockhart, ill as she is, makes an effort to be present and is carried downstairs, and is found in the drawing- room harp in hand ready to sing. Scott in his exhilaration makes the party stand in a circle with hands joined singing :—

Weel may we a' be, Ill may we never see.'

The glee,' such is Miss Ferrier's comment, seemed forced and un- natural. It touched no sympathetic chord, it only jarred the feelings. 'Twas the last attempt at gaiety I witnessed within the walls of Abbotsford."

In Miss Ferrier's later letters the struggle between "the humourist that she was and the moralist that she desired to be" is very apparent, and as the moralist wins the letters lose interest. Nothing can exceed the conventionality of her moralisations or of her expressions of religion. There is scarcely a religious passage in her letters which strikes us as heartfelt. We quote an exception :-

" This has been a cruel winter to me, but I flatter myself the worst is over and that I may live to fight the same battle over again, for life with me will always be a warfare, bodily as well as spiritual, perhaps the more of one the less of the other. At least, it is a comfortable doctrine to believe that sickness of the body often conduces to the health of the soul ; and I confess myself to be such an old-fashioned Christian as to have faith in such things. I am now better—hearted."

Almost all the rest of the religions passages read as though they had been cut wholesale from what Miss Ferrier herself calls "good bookies."