MORE OF MISS WEETON
Miss Weeton : Journal of a Governess. Edited by Edward Hall. (Oxford University Press. Iss.)
AUTOBIOGRAPHY, or self-portrayal, is an art in which the lonely and literary woman particularly excels. Her bitter candour provides her with a means of relief, a means of justification or defence. She does not refresh or delude herself in excesses of mere moralising, but eagerly pursues the rare, delightful agony of complete revelation. Even if she falters, at any rate she has avoided the false refuge of sentimentality. Written in solitude, unperused, often destroyed by the writer herself, these records help to externalise or dispel the load of injury and ingratitude. A man is easily comforted by the trickery of his facile optimism, but a woman is impelled by the desire to know and expose the sources of all her pain. That is why the journals and letters of obscure women, especially those written in periods of debasement and reaction, have often such a poignancy, such an emphatic sociological value.
This book is the second and final volume of Miss Weeton's Journal and Letters, covering the period from ai r to 1825. The first volume (1807 to an) was published in 1936. The two volumes differ very considerably in length and in editorial arrangement, and although both are documents of unques- tionable value, there is a dull redundance of local detail and a zealous profusion of comment in the present volume which give it an effect of heaviness and of incongruity. In short, the book is over-edited. Not content with ordinary footnotes or the necessary brief introduction, Mr. Hall frequently obliterates poor Miss Weeton in showers of his own small type or breaks her story with a jolting interpolation. The reader will be occasionally dismayed, also, by the heavy dabs of indigestible comment which are dished up in the footnotes themselves. We could also have dispensed with many alarm- ing oddities of style—" anent her departure . . . he found it convenient to get shut of her . . . but it was too good to last . . . the tragedy of it," and so forth.
But these interferences, though annoying, do not, of course, lessen our interest in the chief character—who, after all, is really Miss Weeton herself. This tough and unfortunate lady, after struggling for years with poverty and humiliation, was betrayed by a rascally brother and a cruel husband. For the greater part of the record in this book she is neither Miss Weeton nor a governess, but Mrs. Aaron Stock—the ill- treated wife of a mercenary, dyspeptic, religious and appar- ently insane cotton-spinner. And yet her toughness, her faith and her courage remain. We sometimes feel that she is rather a grim woman, by no means incapable of severity and of smart recrimination. Her performances as a walker, in the Isle of Man in 1812 and in Wales in 1825, are stupendous. Three boiled eggs and a crust were fuel enough to propel her for 35 miles. Physical health was not often lacking; and for mental health she depended upon " her own ideas," her flageolet, and a store of impervious piety. Much as we deplore her misfortunes and admire her courage, we are not infrequently depressed by the somewhat uncomfortable genius of this dour and energetic woman. Occasionally, too, she dips her bucket into a sludge of unexpected indelicacy, or seems to enjoy the recital of horrors. If her own account is true, she was treated villainously by Aaron; yet her letters to him were not calculated to improve matters. We may suspect, here and there, a shadow of delusion or a touch of exaggera- tion. But we are glad to know that she floated at last into a quiet region of esteem, an accepted member of the Farr Moor Chapel.
Miss Weeton is a most valuable document, and, inciden- tally, a contribution to the literature of early nineteenth-
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